Collisional profiles of ionized calcium perturbed by helium

Abstract

The spectra of many cool DZ white dwarfs show extremely broad resonance lines of ionized calcium and magnesium in the optical and ultraviolet region. When the line center is strongly saturated, these wings may become a significant source of additional opacity in cool white dwarf atmospheres. The omission of this opacity results in systematic errors in the predicted flux distribution and hence in the effective temperatures and element abundances. In a continuation of Homeier et al. (2007) and Allard et al. (2012), where we presented absorption spectra of Na–He in cool white dwarfs, we extend this work to the Ca+–He system.