Yields, sensitivities and natural line shapes of high-energy Auger lines: Ta, W, Pt, Au, Pb and Bi

We present high-resolution measurements of the natural Auger line shapes of the two highest-energy MNN lines of Ta, W, Pt, Au, Pb and Bi. It was found that all the lines studied are quite narrow, having a width of about 2 eV. The main lines are accompanied by smaller satellite peaks. While these measurements are very suitable for determining the natural line shapes, they are inadequate for obtaining the line intensities. The atomic sensitivities were therefore measured with a resolution of 0.4% of the Auger energy (somewhat better than the commonly available resolution). With this resolution it is impossible to resolve the fine structure of the lines and also gross errors are incurred in the measurements of the atomic sensitivities. We corrected these measured sensitivities by applying our theoretical analysis developed previously. The correction factors for the sensitivities are around 10. These large factors represent also the errors incurred in the as-measured sensitivities if no correction is applied. The detailed line shapes, as derived from the high-resolution measurements, and the corrected sensitivities, as obtained from our analysis, are the true characteristics with which any theoretical calculations of Auger transitions should be compared.