Lifetimes and branching ratios of excited anion states

Relativistic configuration-interaction transition probability calculations have been performed for several anion cases of our recent lanthanide\footnote{S. M. O'Malley and D. R. Beck, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{79}, 012511 (2009).} and actinide\footnote{S. M. O'Malley and D. R. Beck, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{80}, 032514 (2009).} studies. In particular, we identified an E1 transition ($\sim$3680 nm) in La$^-$ that may prove more useful in laser-cooling applications than the previously proposed Os$^-$ candidate\footnote{A. Kellerbauer and J. Walz, New J. Phys. \textbf{8}, 45 (2006).}. We also explored long-lived states in Lu$^-$ and Lr$^-$ which are restricted to M2 decay by selection rules. Finally, we found sufficient mixing between a weakly-bound alternate-configuration Pr$^-$ level and a nearby resonance to result in a lifetime (M1/E2) similar to other excited levels despite a two-electron difference between the dominant configurations. The details of the Pr$^-$ calculations serve as further confirmation of the utility of our universal $jls$ restrictions on $4f^n$ and $5f^n$ portions of lanthanide and actinide wave functions, but we find that a similar application to $d^k$ electron subgroups in transition metals (Os$^-$) has a much smaller impact on the complexity of our calculations.