Comment on the reliability of experimental atomic mean lives obtained with the beam-foil technique

Abstract
It has been suggested by Laughlin and Dalgarno that transition probabilities derived from beam-foil mean lives are invariably too low as a result of underestimating the importance of cascade repopulation. We show that there is in fact no systematic disagreement between recent beam-foil experiments and recent theoretical calculations. A brief discussion of the factors limiting the accuracy of beam-foil mean lives is also given.