Evolution of radiative and Auger cascades following 2s vacancy creation in Fe2

The radiative and Auger cascades following the creation of the 2s shell vacancy in the Fe2+ ion are investigated by performing level-to-level calculations. The branching ratios of the cascades are analyzed and the main decay mechanisms are identified for all levels of the Fe3+ 2s 3d6 configuration. The study shows that the Fe5+ ion is mainly populated in the cascade process. It is demonstrated that the ion yield strongly depends on the level of the initial configuration. The ion yield is presented for all levels of the Fe3+ 2s 3d6 configuration. A study of the time dependence of the population for configurations obtained in cascades shows that it takes ∼10−15 s to reach configurations of the Fe6+ ion. We demonstrate that previous calculations for the decay of the 2s shell vacancy produced in Fe2+ provide an overestimated ion yield for higher ionization stages.