Measured lifetimes of metastable levels of Mn X, Mn XI, Mn XII, and Mn XIII ions

An ion storage technique, based on the capture of metastable multiply charged ions from an external ion source into a Kingdon ion trap, has been used to measure the lifetimes of eight metastable levels of Mn ions with 3s²3p^k configurations, k=1–4. Although several lifetime calculations exist, some of the transition wavelengths have not been previously observed in any source. The lifetimes range from 1.5–35 ms. A measurement precision as good as 0.9% was obtained in favorable cases. The measured lifetimes are τ(Mn X, 3s²3p⁴¹S₀)=2.1±0.3, τ(Mn X, 3s²3p⁴¹D₂)=18.02±0.16, τ(Mn XI, 3s²3p³²P_3/2)=3.0±0.2, τ(Mn XI, 3s²3p³²P_1/2)=6.17±0.29, τ(Mn XI, 3s²3p³²D_3/2)=35.1±1.43, τ(Mn XII, 3s²3p²¹S₀)=1.5±0.2, τ(Mn XII, 3s²3p²¹D₂)=11.16±0.10, and τ(Mn XIII,3s²3p²P_3/2)=31.32±1.82ms. These results are compared with the existing theoretical calculations, which have estimated uncertainties no better than 25%.