Many-body calculations for highly charged ions in search towards the variation of fundamental constants

In the current work, we present theoretical results for optical spectra of highly charged iridium Ir¹⁷⁺ as a candidate ion for sensitive spectroscopic tests of the variation of the fine structure constant alpha. We also present the results of calculations and measurements of optical spectra of Nd-like W, Re, Os, Ir, and Pt ions of particular interest for such studies. We infer two possible values for optical M2/E3 and E1 transitions in Ir¹⁷⁺ which have the highest predicted sensitivity to a possible variation of alpha among stable atomic systems.