Radiative lifetimes of the bound excited states of magnesium and beryllium

We present the radiative lifetimes for series of bound excited states of neutral magnesium and beryllium derived from the transition probabilities calculated in a simple configuration-interaction procedure using a finite basis set constructed from B splines. Our calculated radiative lifetimes compare very well with the most accurate recent state-selected excitation measurements. In particular, our calculation has removed the discrepancy between earlier theoretical and experimental lifetimes for the first few Mg i 3snd ¹D states that are strongly affected by the configuration mixing from 3pp configuration series.