Experimental study of autoionizing states of AuI

This paper describes the investigation of the autoionizing states of AuI by exciting the states of 6d²D_3/2 and 6d D_5/2 with tunable dye lasers by means of a resonance ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer (RI-TOFMS). Many new autoionizing states were found, a few of which have narrow-linewidths of about 0.1 cm^–1. The photoionization efficiencies for different channels were compared. Among the autoionizing states found so far, the highest photoionization yield is given by two newly obtained states from the state 6d²D_5/2, 3683.6 cm^–1 and 4636.5 cm^–1 above the first ionization limit. In addition, the Shore-Fano profile parameters of several autoionizing resonances were determined by a nonlinear fitting program.