Atomic structure, electron-impact excitation and collisional-radiative modelling for Ar II

Abstract

The spectra from singly ionized argon Ar II has significant diagnostic capability in the characterization and modelling of both magnetically-confined fusion and astrophysical plasmas. The literature has several pre-existing data sets for Ar+ but this paper presents the results from 3 new atomic structure and electron-impact scattering models in order to better constrain the differences in atomic data and how they impact well-known plasma diagnostics. Several independent atomic structure methodologies are employed to calculate the energy levels and transition probabilities for each model. The first approach employs a relativistic Dirac–Coulomb Hamiltonian model, the second approach uses a semi-relativistic Breit–Pauli Hamiltonian with the mass-velocity, Darwin and spin–orbit corrections, and in a third case an ICFT approach. Three atomic structure models provide a foundation for Dirac R-matrix, a semi-relativistic ICFT (Intermediate Coupling Frame Transformation) and a Breit–Pauli R-Matrix with Pseudostates (BPRMPS) calculation. Synthetic spectra utilizing these three data sets are compared against measurements taken at the Compact Toroidal Hybrid (CTH) stellarator, and the total radiative power loss is also benchmarked against previous calculations.