Lyman series vacuum

Two measurements [31,10] were conducted at a low-inductance vacuum spark plasma and a tokamak plasma respectively. In both cases only the w line was reported. The first study used a double Johann spectrograph and characteristic K lines were used for calibration [31]. The energy of the w was 5.20558(55) keV or a 105 ppm result The second study [10] used a tokamak plasma and claimed an uncertainty of 40 ppm. Close lying Lyman series lines were used for calibration so this was a relative measurement chain assuming one-electron QED. Shorter wavelength calibration lines and helium-like resonances were observed in second order diffraction suggesting the significant systematic shifts discussed above. The third study [11] was a relative measurement to the w line and, as such, can not be compared to absolute measurements. 

Representative emission spectra are shown schematically in Fig. 2.2 for hydrogen, potassium, and mercury on a common wavelength scale from the near infrared to the ultraviolet. Under the coarse wavelength resolution of this figure, the emitted light intensities are concentrated at single, well-defined emission lines. In H, the displayed emission consists of four convergent series of lines, the so-called Ritz-Paschen and Pfund series in the near infrared, the Lyman series in the vacuum ultraviolet, and the Balmer series in the visible. Johann Balmer, a schoolteacher in Basel in the late nineteenth century. 

Very accurate high-resolution vacuum-UV data with an error of 0.000 1A for the Lyman series of the line spectrum of the hydrogen atom are reported in [8]. This error, translated into wave numbers, constitutes an error of about 0.01 cm in the wave numbers around 100,000 cm ... 

Figure 2.4 Hydrogen atom energy levels and transitions. The Lyman, Balmer, Ritz-Paschen, and Brackett series occur in the vacuum ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared, and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, respectively.

Fig. 2 The plot of Eq. (5) for the Lyman vacuum-UV series of the hydrogen atom for which the quantum number of the final state is n = 1. See discussion in the text. The data are from Sansonetti [8]...

The atomic line-spectral data for the Lyman vacuum-UV series of the hydrogen atom are given in Table 1. The plot of the line wave number vs 1/nf-, following Eqs. (7) and (8), is displayed in Fig. 2. The least-squares fitting is excellent, with = 1.000 and ct = 0.41 cm . The values obtained for the constant of proportionality from the least-squares fitting are ... 

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