Radiative lifetimes, branching fractions and transition probabilities in Ge I -: solar implications

New radiative lifetimes have been measured for the 5s (3)P(0,1,2)degrees and 5s (1)P(1)degrees levels of Ge I using a laser-produced plasma subject to selective laser excitation. A diffraction grating based emission spectrometer of moderately high resolution has been used to remeasure the branching ratios of the 4p-5s depopulating transitions. The oscillator strengths of astrophysical interest, which have been derived from these new data, are compared with theoretical values calculated within a pseudo-relativistic Hartree-Fock approach. The new set of f-values has been compared with the few results available in the literature, which are generally characterized by a large scatter and a low accuracy. The solar photospheric abundance of germanium deduced from the new atomic data of the present work is A(Ge) = 3.58 +/- 0.05, on the usual logarithmic scale, in agreement with the meteoritic value.