A brief and personalised history of doubly-excited states

Abstract

This partly historical paper is based on a presentation at the conference 'Spectroscopy of Highly Charged Ions: Not Just the Light at the End of an Accelerator'. It starts with an experiment taking place on a Saturday morning/afternoon at The Research Institute in Stockholm a long, long time ago. The development of our understanding of multiply-excited states in simple and complex atoms owes much to the efforts of Professor Martinson and his colleagues since the late 1960s and continues to this day. We give a brief historical survey of what we consider to be important events in these developments and include some of the latest results of ongoing research. We conclude with a few historic pictures of the collaborators of Professor Indrek Martinson. © Physica Scripta 2005.