Nuclear quadrupole moments of bismuth -: art. no. 133003

Multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock models have been employed to compute the electric field gradient in the ground state of the neutral bismuth atom. Combined with the experimental electric quadrupole hyperfine interaction constant, one obtains for Bi-209 the nuclear quadrupole moment Q = -516 (15) mb, which is almost 40% away from the previously accepted standard value [-370 (26) mb], and narrows by over an order of magnitude the long-standing, extremely broad array of various results ranging from -370 to -710 mb. The recent Q values of Bi-202-208,Bi-210m-213 by Pearson et al. suffer a consequent change.