An Evaluated Compilation of Data for Electron Impact Excitation of
Atomic Ions
Gallagher,J.W., Pradhan,A.K. : 1985,
JILA
Data Center Report No. 30,
Univ. of Colorado.
The need for accurate electron-ion collision data is immense, with
applications in such diverse fields as hard X-ray spectroscopy, infrared
astronomy, and fusion energy research. As few of the ions of interest are
attainable in the laboratory, the user must depend primarily on
theoretical data. Many calculation describing electron-impact excitation
of atomic ions have been published during the past three decades, but
these vary considerably in sophistication and accuracy. During this time,
important atomic effects such as configuration interaction and
autoionizing resonances have been recognized and incorporated.
Concomitantly theoreticians have been challenged to improve the accuracy
of their calculations to provide reliable diagnostics in high-resolution
measurements associated with fusion plasmas and astronomical sources.
Computer packages to generate high-accuracy data have been written and
refined in the past decade, but because they require large investments
of manpower and computing time, the actual number of calculations which
have used these is still small. Thus, most of the available theoretical
data are still below optimum accuracy. The purpose of this report is to
review all the theoretical data describing electron-impact excitation
of atomic ions published since the mid-1950's, to access the range of
accuracy of each data set, and to make the most reliable of these data
easily accessible to users.
An numbered index of references
or a sequential list of abstracts
is also available.