New Energy Levels and Transitions of 5s25p2 (6d+7s) Configurations in Xe IV
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper “New energy levels and transitions...” by Almandos et al reports 36 new energy levels of Xe IV which were observed experimentally and also calculated (a) semi-empirically using Cowan code and (b) ab initio using GRASP package. Reported results may be interesting for astrophysics and for plasma physics.
The paper is very inaccurately written with lots of errors and typos, which makes it almost impossible to read. Some of the most obvious errors are:
Many references are missing in the text; instead there are signs [Error! Bookmark not defined.]. In the reference list there are also inaccuracies and errors (e.g. Refs 1 and 12); the format differs from one reference to another.
The energies in Table 3 do not agree with the wavelengths and with Table 1. It seems that they all should be multiplied by 1000 (or dots should be substituted by commas).
Similar errors seem to be present in Figs.1-3.
The axes in Fig.4 are not defined.
The list above is definitely not complete. The paper should be accurately rewritten before it can be properly refereed.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thanks for your suggestions and we apologize for the grammatical errors in our previous manuscript. We carried out the corrections suggested by referee 1
The answers to referee 1 are as follows :
We corrected the typing errors and the missing references in the text. We also modified the reference formats according to atoms
We put the energies in Table 3 in agreement with the wavelengths and with Table 1 (dots were substituted by commas).
In Figs. 1-3 the commas for the energies are correct.
Fig. 4 was removed from the manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Ref. No. atoms-631980Titlel: New energy levels and transitions of 5s^25p^2(6d+7s) configurations in Xe IV
Authors: J Reyna Almandos, M. Raineri, J.C.B. Pegan and M. Gallardo The present paper gives the result of spectral measurement of Xe IV by using a pulsed discharge light source
and gives also the result of analysis by means of HFR and MCDF.
The authors have illustrated new 36 energy levels within the 5s^25p^2(6d+7s) configurations and 163 dipole
optical lines due to the transitions from 5s^25p^2(6d+7s) configuration states. The present paper is well written and well comprehensive, and the paper gives
some new data which are useful for further research in the neighbouring field in physics.
The paper deserves for publication as one of the articles in the journal atoms. The authors are suggested to consider the following points before obtaining their final version. 1. In Abstract, 3s^23p^2 should read 5s^25p^2. 2. The authors explain the use of Babushkin gauge in Table 1 refering the paper of C. F. Fischer in
their reference number 24. However, this is somewhat unsound. The reference treats the fobidden transitions
whereas the present paper deals with the lifetimes due to the optically allowed transitions.
The authors' argumentation in the present paper can hardly be justified. 3. Comparing the HFR_a, HFR+CP_a, and MCDF calculations in Table 1, the present authors insist
that the MCDF is worse than HFR_a or HFR+CP_a. However, this argumentation sounds somewhat
misleading. By using a newer version of GRASP codes (for example GRASP2018) the authors could
have included more correlation configurations in their calculation to get better results,
which might have been competitive to te other methods.
There are no ways to use such an old code for comparison to the other types of method. 4. In table 3, only the experimental wavelengths are given. It would be worthy to list theoretical
(HFR, HFR_a, HFR+CP, or HFR+CP_a) values in the table for the ease of comparison by the reader. 5. Figure 4 is incomprehensive. Should be replaced by a proper one.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thanks for your suggestions and we apologize for the grammatical errors in our previous manuscript. We carried out the corrections suggested by referee 2
The answers to referee 2 are as follows :
1.The errors in the abstract were corrected.
Reference 24 was changed and the argument about the use of Babushkin gauge in Table 1 was justified with a new paragraph in section 3. Results and Discussion A new paragraph on the results obtained from the use of the GRASP program compared to the other HFR calculations in our work was added to point 3. Results and discussions. In Table 3 we prefer to keep only the experimental value of the wavelengths since putting the theoretical values with the different methods used would be very difficult for us. Fig. 4 was removed from the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors made changes I suggested in the previous report and now the paper is easier to read. I have not found any obvious errors and misprints. My main concern now is about the validity of the assignments of the levels based on the comparison of the calculations with the experimental data. The authors report statistical correlations between theory and experiment to be typically around 0.3-0.5. The authors consider this to be sufficiently good to justify their level designations. I am not a spectroscopist and I have two questions here:
i) What is the definition of the correlation in this context?
ii) Correlations below 1/2 do not seem to be particularly large. Is this level of correlation indeed enough to make reliable designations of the levels? I think this point should be discussed in more detail and clarified.
English is still not very good and needs editing. Below are several suggestions to clarify the meaning.
p.3,l.3: "...described in [18] for the same authors of this paper," -> "described in our paper [18]".
p.3,l.-4: "...whose values for alpha_d and r_c are in Table 2." -> "with the values of alpha_d and r_c taken from Table 2."
p.6,l.-14: "... more correlations configurations could not be included."
-> " more configurations could not be included."
p.6,l.-11: "To understand the importance of these values". I suggest to change the word 'importance' to 'relevance', or 'significance'.
I think that after these changes are made the paper may be published.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your suggestions and corrections.
With respect to points i) and ii) we add a paragraph in the text clarifying the correlation concept and its relation to the assignment of the levels "There is no absolute scale for experimental intensity and therefore we only test its proportionality with the theoretical intensity. We do not include corrections due to the variation of plate reflectivity as a function of wavelength - there is no precise model for this. Our criterion for statistical correlation is to obtain a positive value as close as possible to the unit. Therefore, having a good statistical correlation supports our analysis, but it is just one of the analysis criteria.”
We also emphasize in a new phrase introduced in the text, the importance of having mostly determined new energy levels with more than two experimental transitions.
We also corrected the English of some paragraphs according to his indications
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
