Three-step laser excitation of the odd-parity

We report new experimental data on the term energies and effective quantum numbers of the highly excited odd parity states of cadmium in the 71 773–72 500 cm-1 energy range. The experiment was performed using three dye lasers simultaneously pumped by the second harmonic (532 nm) of the Nd;YAG laser. The vapor containment and detection system was a thermionic diode ion detector working in a space charge limited mode. The new observations include the 5snf3F3 (12 ⩽ n ⩽ 52), 5snf3F4 (13 ⩽ n ⩽ 33) and 5snf3F2 (12 ⩽ n ⩽ 22) Rydberg series excited from the 5s5d3D multiplet. A two parameter fit to the transitions energies of the 5snf3F3 series yields the binding energy of the 5snd 2D2 level as 13 042.178 ± 0.02 cm-1 and consequently the first ionization of cadmium is determined as 72 540.05 ± 0.13 cm-1, which is in good agreement with the previously reported value