Characterisation of a hollow-cathode lamp to measure accurate branching fractions of rare-earth elements.

This work describes the tests performed with a newly built hollow-cathode lamp to ensure its capability to measure atomic parameters such as transition probabilities accurately. We discuss the design of the lamp and the experimental setup that will be used to measure transition probabilities. We show the discharge characteristics of the lamp and also the stability of spectral emission of the lamp over a period of two hours. Finally, it is concluded that the experimental setup, the lamp, and a camera with high resolving power are well suited for the measurement of the transition probabilities of doubly ionised rare-earths like Nd III.

Graphical abstract illustrating the use of a hollow-cathode lamp setup for accurately measuring branching fractions of rare-earth elements. The setup includes a diffraction grating spectrometer and a CMOS camera to detect radiation across a spectral range of 200 nm to 800 nm with a resolving power of 150,000 at 450 nm