Calculations of Nd⁻ binding energies and photodetachment partial cross sections

The electron affinity for neodymium is determined from relativistic configuration interaction calculations to be 169 meV, and six additional bound excited states are also predicted. These 6p attachments to the 4f⁴6s² neutral ground-state configuration are carefully analyzed with respect to approximate LS of the total configuration and LSJ of the 4f⁴ subgroup. This analysis is used to drastically reduce the basis size of the calculations and preselect channels for potentially large photodetachment partial cross sections. Estimations of the effects of the mixing of resonance states in the partial cross-section calculations suggest that for incident photon energies ∼2.0 eV or larger, 6s detachments to excited 4f⁴6s6p thresholds will represent the dominant channels of the total cross section.