Decay of metastable states in NdII

peer reviewedThe difficulty associated with an accurate determination of transition rates for forbidden lines in lowly ionized heavy elements is illustrated in the case of Nd II. We have investigated the radiative decay of the low-lying metastable levels in Nd+ including the two levels 4f(4)(I-5) 5d K-6(11/2) and 4f(4)(I-5) 5d I-6(13/2). In these two particular cases, using di. erent theoretical approaches, we. nd that the decay is dominated by the M1 channels but that the E2 contributions are of the same order of magnitude. These levels have also been studied experimentally by lifetime measurements with the heavy ion storage ring CRYRING of Stockholm University. The difficulties encountered when performing such experiments are underlined and discussed