Complementary Branching Ratios by Satellite Excitation

We show that if a state decays to produce a fraction R of products in one of two decay channels, then one can obtain the complementary fraction, 1-R, by exciting the character of a different state, but at the location of the first state's resonance. This structure will appear as a satellite to the second state with a branching ratio that depends only on the first state's decay interactions. Since this requires the real excitation of a state far off resonance, this process will be important only for short-lived states, which have long wings in their excitation spectra. We illustrate this effect with the $6pns$ and $6pnd$ autoionizing states of barium.