The influence of relativistic, relaxation, and correlation effects on the low-lying energy levels of the $3d^{10},3d^{9}4s$, and $3d^{9}4p$ configurations of Cu II have been investigated. Large-scale multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock wave functions were applied to calculate the excitation energies and the electric-dipole-allowed transition probabilities and to allow for a systematic improvement of the computations. From these calculations, the theoretical lifetimes of the $3d^{9}4p$ levels are derived and compared with previous experiments and computations. Our results show that we provide not only an improved data basis for the low-lying levels of Cu II but also a useful computational model for studying other ions along the nickel isoelectronic sequence.

• Received 23 January 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.72.012507