Modeling of iron K lines: Radiative and Auger decay data for –^*

¹ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 662, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
² Centro de Física, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), PO Box 21827, Caracas 1020A, Venezuela

Corresponding author: T. R. Kallman, timothy.r.kallman@nasa.gov

Received: 19 June 2003
Accepted: 8 August 2003

Abstract

A detailed analysis of the radiative and Auger de-excitation channels of K-shell vacancy states in Fe ii–Fe ix has been carried out. Level energies, wavelengths, A-values, Auger rates and fluorescence yields have been calculated for the lowest fine-structure levels populated by photoionization of the ground state of the parent ion. Different branching ratios, namely K/K, Kβ/Kα, KLM/KLL, KMM/KLL, and the total K-shell fluorescence yields, , obtained in the present work have been compared with other theoretical data and solid-state measurements, finding good general agreement with the latter. The K/K ratio is found to be sensitive to the excitation mechanism. From these comparisons it has been possible to estimate an accuracy of ~10% for the present transition probabilities.