Sternheimer free determination of the51V nuclear quadrupole moment from hyperfine structure measurements

The hyperfine structure (hfs) of 18 metastable states of⁵¹V has been measured by laser induced fluorescence. 15 of these states have been measured additionally very precisely by the ABMR-LIRF method. Using results of earlier hfs measurements, the hfs of altogether 33 fine structure states is analyzed using a method of simultaneous parametrization of one- and two-body interactions in the atomic hfs of the model space 3d ^{3 +M} 4s ^{2 ?M} (M = 0, 1, 2). The hfs of these states is described by 16 parameters for the magnetic dipole interaction and 12 parameters for the electric quadrupole interaction. From these model space parameters corresponding configuration dependent parameters for the three configurations were determined. These parameters allow a prediction of the hfs constants of all states of the modelspace within an accuracy of 5 to 10%. The evaluation of the nuclear quadrupole moment of⁵¹V, free of Sternheimer corrections up to second order, yielded the value of -0.043(5) barn.