A critical compilation of experimental data on spectral lines and energy levels of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium

For more than 50 years, Charlotte Moore’s compilation of atomic energy levels and its subsequent revisions have been the standard source of reference data for the spectra of hydrogen and its isotopes. In those publications, theoretical data based on quantum-electrodynamic calculations have been given. This reflects the fact that the theory of the hydrogen spectrum has been perfected to an extent far exceeding the capabilities of the best measurements. However, rapid advances in the techniques of laser spectroscopy and optical frequency metrology have recently put experiments on a par with theory in terms of precision. This calls for construction of new comprehensive data sets for H, D, and T that summarize the latest experimental work and can be directly compared with the modern theoretical reference data. The present work compiles several tens of recent measurements of the hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium fine and hyperfine structure intervals and presents sets of energy levels and Ritz wavelengths derived from those measurements. Data exist for the fine structure of energy levels of hydrogen and deuterium up to principal quantum number n = 12. For higher lying levels, there are many observed lines with unresolved fine structure. From those observations, level centers (centers of the fine structure) are derived by a least-squares optimization, and Ritz wavelengths of series with upper levels up to n = 40 are obtained. For tritium, the n = 2 and 3 energy level intervals are derived from experimental observations.