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Research Van Swinderen Institute

Physics Colloquium, Anastasia Borschevsky, Van Swinderen Institute, University of Groningen

When:Th 18-01-2018 16:00 - 17:00
Where:FSE-Building 5111.0080

Speaker: Anastasia Borschevsky
Affiliation: Van Swinderen Institute, University of Groningen
Title:

Theoretical investigations of the heaviest elements

Date: 18 January 2018
Start: 16:00 (Doors open and coffee available at 15:30)
Location: FSE-Building 5111.0080
Host: Daniel Boer

Abstract:

Experimental study of atomic properties of the heaviest elements can provide valuable information on their electronic structure and on the strong influence that relativity has on these systems. Such experiments are extremely challenging, due to the miniscule amounts and the very short lifetimes of the produced atoms, and theoretical investigations are often important for their success. Theory can provide support at all the stages of the experiments, from planning the measurements, through extracting the properties of interest from the data, and to the interpretation of the results and their comparison to theoretically predicted values. To this end, highly accurate calculations of the atomic properties of heavy and superheavy elements are needed. In order to be reliable, such calculations must include both relativistic effects and electron correlation on the highest possible level.

The talk will provide an introduction to the topic of investigations of heavy and superheavy elements. Theoretical methods will be presented, and the effects of relativity on electronic structure and properties will be discussed. The second part of the talk will focus on the recent successful applications of these methods to ionization potentials, electron affinities, and spectra of various systems [1-3], and on a number of ongoing investigations, such as hyperfine structure calculations.

[1] A. Borschevsky, L. F. Pa ลก teka, V. Pershina, E. Eliav, and U. Kaldor, Phys. Rev. A 91, 020501(R) (2015)

[2] L. F. Pasteka, E. Eliav, A. Borschevsky, U. Kaldor, and P. Schwerdtfeger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 023002 (2017)

[3] T. K. Sato, M. Asai, A. Borschevsky, T. Stora, N. Sato, et al., Nature 520, 209 (2015)