Atomic Structure of the Heaviest Elements

Dear Colleagues,

Actinides exhibit a remarkable transition in terms of applied and fundamental research as they comprise the heaviest naturally occurring as well as fully manmade chemical elements. They have attracted the attention of atomic spectroscopists since their discovery as it was believed that many of their elemental properties could be deduced from knowledge of the electron configuration. The tiny quantity production of these elements did not prevent scientists from performing elaborate and extensive spectroscopy, such as with huge spectrographs. Thus, essential data about the atomic structure up to element 99 – einsteinium – were obtained even if some spectral lines could not be (or not correctly) assigned back then.

Today, we are much further along in atomic spectroscopy, although the actinides are far from being fully explored. In addition to better model descriptions of the atom, recent developments and advances in the field of optical spectroscopy have not only led to a better understanding of the atomic structure of the already measured elements but also to tackling the superheavy elements previously considered experimentally inaccessible.

This Special Issue of Atoms covers recent theoretical and experimental work about the atomic structure of actinides as well as related topics, such as transport properties in gases, nuclear properties, and medical applications. With the advancing technology for production and handling of actinides and transactinides, we hope that this issue will serve as a useful resource for future work in the field of optical spectroscopy and accelerator-based laser ion sources. We welcome original research articles as well as review articles on specific topics.

Dr. Mustapha Laatiaoui
Dr. Sebastian Raeder
Guest Editors

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