Abstract

The Rydberg spectra of the rare gases have been a matter of interest for both experimentalists and theorists for many years. Because of fine structure in the ionic core, there are two separate ionization limits. The Rydberg series converging to the upper (j-1/2) fine-structure level auto- ionize. Among the heavy rare gases, xenon Rydberg states have been recently measured at high accuracy with classical high resolution vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) absorption spectroscopy/1/. The Stark effect was only investigated for the bound Xe Rydberg states /2/. Here we report the first high resolution Stark effect study of the autoionizing series by single photon excitation from the ground state and present calculations explaining the observations.

© 1988 Optical Society of America