TRIPLY EXCITED-STATES OF THE LITHIUM ISOELECTRONIC SEQUENCE - Z = 3-54

The excitation energies and the probabilities for radiative and radiat ionless decays of hollow atom states belonging to the 2s(2)2p, 2s2p(2) and 2p(3) configurations have been calculated on the basis of perturb ation theory method (1/Z-expansion) in a broad range of values of atom ic number Z. Our results agree well with the first observation of thes e states and the theoretical and experimental results obtained recentl y for neutral Li atoms. It should be noted that the 1/Z expansion meth od gives more accurate results for ions than for neutral systems, beca use of the limited number of coefficients of 1/Z expansion calculated in this work. In this case the good agreement provided by our results for neutral system allows us to believe that our data for the same tri ply excited states with Z > 3 should be used for prediction of new exp eriments with these states.