Large-scale CIV3 calculations of fine-structure energy levels and radiative rates in Al-like copper

We have performed large-scale CIV3 calculations of excitation energies from the ground state for 97 fine-structure levels as well as of oscillator strengths and radiative decay rates for all electric-dipole-allowed and intercombination transitions among the fine-structure levels of the terms belonging to the (1s22s22p6)3s23p, 3s3p2, 3s23d, 3p3, 3s3p3d, 3p23d, 3s3d2, 3s24s, 3s24p, 3s24d, 3s24f, and 3s3p4s configurations of Cu XVII. These states are represented by very extensive configuration-interaction (CI) wave functions obtained with the CIV3 (Configuration-Interaction Version 3) computer code of Hibbert. The important relativistic effects in intermediate coupling are incorporated by means of the Breit–Pauli Hamiltonian, which consists of the nonrelativistic term plus the one-body mass correction, Darwin term, and spin–orbit, spin–other-orbit, and spin–spin operators. To keep our calculated energy splittings as close as possible to the experimental values (wherever available), we have made small adjustments to the diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian matrices. Our calculated excitation energies, including their ordering, are in excellent agreement with the available experimental results. From our radiative decay rates we have also calculated radiative lifetimes of some fine-structure levels. The mixing among several fine-structure levels is found to be so strong that the correct identification of these levels becomes very difficult. We believe that our extensive calculations will be useful to experimentalists in identifying the fine-structure levels in their future work. In this calculation we also predict new data for several fine-structure levels where no other theoretical and (or) experimental results are available.