On the fine structure photodetachment intensities using the irreducible tensorial expression of second quantization operators

The branching ratios of the fine-structure photodetachment intensities of S- have been calculated by Blondel et al. (J. Phys. B 39(2006)1409) using the standard irreducible tensorial operator techniques. They observed that the relative intensities were consistent with the well known Engelking-Lineberger formula (Phys. Rev. A19(1979)149) derived from the fractional parentage approach, and qualified this agreement as remarkable. In the present paper, we show that it can be understood from a general interesting angular momentum expression relating a weighted sum of squared 9j-symbols and a weighted sum of products of squared 6j-symbols. We also point out that the standard approach result is a special case of the photodetachment cross sections parametrization by Pan and Starace (Phys. Rev. A47(1993)295) who already established the link with the Engelking-Lineberger's result. The present work provides a new, elegant and deep link between the two formalisms, thanks to the irreducible tensorial expression of the second quantization form of the electric dipole transition operator.