Effect of higher-order multipole moments on the Stark line shape

Abstract

Spectral line shapes are sensitive to plasma conditions and are often used to diagnose electron density of laboratory plasmas as well as astrophysical plasmas. Stark line-shape models take into account the perturbation of the radiator's energy structure due to the Coulomb interaction with the surrounding charged particles. Solving this Coulomb interaction is challenging and is commonly approximated via a multipole expansion. However, most models include only up to the second term of the expansion (the dipole term). While there have been studies on the higher-order terms due to one of the species (i.e., either ions or electrons), there is no model that includes the terms beyond dipole from both species. Here, we investigate the importance of the higher-order multipole terms from both species on the $\mathrm{H}\ensuremath{\beta}$ line shape. First, we find that it is important to include higher-order terms consistently from both ions and electrons to reproduce measured line-shape asymmetry. Next, we find that the line shape calculated with the dipole-only approximation becomes inaccurate as density increases. It is necessary to include up to the third (quadrupole) term to compute the line shape accurately within 2%. Since most existing models include only up to the dipole terms, the densities inferred with such models are in question. We find that the model without the quadrupole term slightly underestimates the density, and the discrepancy becomes as large as 12% at high densities. While the case of study is limited to $\mathrm{H}\ensuremath{\beta}$, we expect similar impact on other lines.