Measuring chemical evolution and gravitational dependence of α using ultraviolet Fe V and Ni V transitions in white-dwarf spectra

In this paper, we present the details of the ab initio high-precision configuration interaction and many-body perturbation theory calculations that were used in a previous work to place limits on the dependence of the fine-structure constant, alpha, on the gravitational field of the white-dwarf star G191-B2B. These calculations were combined with laboratory wavelengths and spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph to obtain limits on the gravitational alpha-dependence using Fe V and Ni V transitions. The uncertainty in these results are dominated by the uncertainty in the laboratory wavelengths. In this work we also present ab initio calculations of the isotopic shifts of the Fe V transitions. We show that improved laboratory spectra will enable determination of the relative isotope abundances in Fe V to an accuracy ~20%. Therefore this work provides a strong motivation for new laboratory measurements.