The amazing cadmium atom

摘要

Summarize the unique properties of the Cd atom that have lead tonmany new types of laser excitation schemes and processes that began 35nyears ago. These include the CW blue and ultraviolet laser transitionsnin Cd+, the generation of 125-ps pulses (the shortestnmode-locked pulses at that time), the process of Penning ionization as anlaser excitation mechanism, recombination lasers produced by bothnlaser-produced plasmas and a new segmented arc recombination laser (SPERnlaser) and the first soft-X-ray pumped photoionization laser, which arenall described briefly