Date of Award

6-2013

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Dr. Thomas Gorczyca

Second Advisor

Dr. Dean Halderson

Third Advisor

Dr. Manuela Bautista

Keywords

photodetachment, cross section, negative ions

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

This thesis attempts to better understand the results obtained from photodetachment experiments of Fe-, made by the Western Michigan University experimental atomic physics group at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory.

After a relevant description of the quantum mechanics and theoretical atomic physics concepts and formulas involved in this subject, a physically realistic model, based on the square well potential, is developed. Based on this model, the theoretical photodetachment cross section is computed in order to reproduce the qualitative behavior of the experimental photodetachment cross section measured at ALS.

This development, involving programming in Fortran and numerical computing, offers a great opportunity to study and appreciate the interplay between analytical, computational, and experimental aspects of an atomic physics problem. The results of this works show a good qualitative description of the experimental data.

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