Experimental and theoretical transition probabilities in singly ionized gold

Absolute transition probabilities have been measured for lines originating from the 5d⁹6d and 5d⁹7s electronic configurations in the spectrum of singly ionized gold (Au  ii ). The laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy has been applied to free gold atoms and ions produced by laser ablation. Absolute transition probabilities have been determined using the branching fraction and the Boltzmann plot methods. Theoretical branching fractions as well as radiative lifetime values have also been obtained by a relativistic Hartree–Fock method taking core polarization and configuration interaction effects into account. The new results are compared with previous results when available.     

OPserver: interactive online computations of opacities and radiative accelerations

Codes to compute mean opacities and radiative accelerations for arbitrary chemical mixtures using the Opacity Project recently revised data have been restructured in a client–server architecture and transcribed as a subroutine library. This implementation increases efficiency in stellar modelling where element stratification due to diffusion processes is depth dependent, and thus requires repeated fast opacity re-estimates. Three user modes are provided to fit different computing environments, namely, a web browser, a local workstation and a distributed grid.     

He Conductivity in Cool White Dwarf Atmospheres

We investigate the conductivity of warm dense helium under conditions found in the atmospheres of cool white dwarfs using ab initio simulations. The calculations performed consist of quantum molecular dynamics simulations where the electronic wavefunction at each time step is obtained using density functional theory, while the ion trajectories are calculated using the resulting quantum mechanical forces. We use both conventional DFT (PW91) and hybrid (PBE0) functionals to calculate the conductivities that provide an estimate of the ionization fraction. While the calculations are in good agreement with the measurements for the equation of state, a significant discrepancy exists with the recently measured conductivity.     

Composite analytical solutions for a soil vapour extraction system

Soil vapour extraction (SVE) is a common remediation technique for cleaning up unsaturated soils contaminated by volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Analytical solutions, which result from simple mathematical models, can allow the fast approximation of the time‐dependent effluent concentration and the gaining of insight into the processes that take place during soil remediation. Deriving the analytical solutions to advection–dispersion equations that simultaneously take into account the mechanical dispersion and molecular diffusion is very difficult because of the variable dependence of governing equations' coefficients. In this study, we first present two simplified analytical solutions that only consider mechanical dispersion or molecular diffusion. The two developed analytical solutions are compared with the numerical solution that simultaneously considers both mechanical dispersion and molecular diffusion to examine the applicability of the two simplified analytical solutions and distinguishes the individual contribution of the mechanical dispersion and molecular diffusion to total VOCs transport in an SVE system. Results show that dispersion plays an important role during SVE decontamination and neither the diffusion‐dominated solution nor the dispersion‐dominated solution can agree well with the numerical solution when both mechanical dispersion and molecular diffusion have significant contributions to the total VOCs transport flux. A composite analytical solution that linearly couples the diffusion‐ and dispersion‐dominated analytical solutions, which is proposed herein to eliminate the discrepancy between the analytical solutions and the numerical solution. Results indicate that the proposed composite analytical solution agrees well with the numerical solution and is an effective tool for quickly and accurately evaluating the time‐dependent effluent concentration for parameters of the different ranges of interest in an SVE remedial system. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantum peculiarities of the primordial hydrogen recombination

Some problems of the two-photon decay of highly excited atomic hydrogen and helium levels are considered. The necessary accuracy of calculating the transition probabilities is shown to require abandoning the purely dipole approximation in the theory of atomic hydrogen radiation. The range of applicability of the perturbation theory to this process is discussed. We suggest a new mechanism of the Lyman photon redistribution due to very close locations of the 20P and 19P levels in the hydrogen and deuterium atoms, respectively (hydrogen-deuterium resonance).