Double ionization of doubly excited states of heliumlike targets

Doubly excited states of atoms are extremely sensitive to electron correlation, while single photon double ionization is a means to probe electron correlation.  We consider double photoionization from the doubly excited states of targets with two fully correlated valence electrons.  In the case of atomic beryllium, the doubly excited states that are coupled in ³P and ¹D initial state symmetries are actually bound, and thus these targets can be placed on a finite grid.  The ¹S initial state of Be, however, is autoionizing, though with a rather narrow width and in fact decays to a single known channel.  We preent the triple differential cross section (TDCS) for removing the fully correlated electrons and consider the resulting angular distributions of the electrons in a double ionization event.  We also consider the implications for treating double ionization in our computational scheme from autoionizing initial states, in support of recent experimental data that probes the Coulomb breakup of doubly excited helium.