Dielectronic recombination studies based on EBIT

Abstract

Dielectronic recombination (DR) process plays an important role in high temperature plasmas, where DR can affect charge balance and level populations significantly, and can cause radiative energy loss. Resolvable DR sourced satellite lines are often used for plasma temperature diagnostics, while the un-resolvable ones disturb determining spectral line shape, line intensity, and line position. Data of DR resonant strength is vital for accurate modeling of high temperature plasmas. DR studies are also important for testing atomic structure and atomic collision theories, since they carry information on quantum electrodynamics, relativistic effects, electron correlations and so on. Electron beam ion trap (EBIT) is an accelerator type device, which is capable of acting as both ion sources and light sources. EBIT can produce a special sort of plasma, in which electron energy is tunable and has a very narrow distribution. This made it possible for disentanglement studies on electron ion collision processes in plasmas. In this paper, experimental studies of DR processes based on electron beam ion traps (EBIT) will be discussed.