Even-parity states of the Sm atom with stepwise excitation

Two-colour stepwise excitation and photoionization schemes are adopted to study the spectra of high-lying states of the Sm atom. These bound even-parity states are excited with three different excitation paths from the 4f⁶6s6p⁷D_J (J=1, 2, 3) intermediate states, respectively. They are probed by photoionization process with an extra photon driving them to the continuum states. In this experiment, 270 states are detected in an energy range from 36160 cm^-1 to 42250 cm^-1, 109 of which are newly discovered, while the rest of them are confirmed to be the energy levels reported previously. Furthermore, based on the J-momentum selection rules of three excitation paths, a unique assignment of J-momentum for all observed states is determined, eliminating all remaining ambiguities in the literature. Finally, 53 single-colour transitions originating from the scanning laser are also identified. For all the relevant transitions, the information about their relative intensities is also given in the paper.