Relativistic calculations of excitation and ionization of highly charged ions by electron impact. Final technical report

Abstract

Our rapid relativistic atomic structure program and relativistic distorted-wave programs for excitation and ionization of highly charged ions were further improved. The generalized Briet interaction and other QED corrections were added to the atomic structure program, and the speed of the distorted-wave excitation program was increased by over an order of magnitude over what it was when our initial large-scale relativistic calculations of excitation of Ne-like ions were made. The improved programs were then used to calculate collision strengths for 330 transitions in F-like ions with 22 {le} Z {le} 92 and 248 transitions in Ni-like ions with 60 {le} Z {le} 92. We expanded the relativistic collision program to include an option to use atomic structure data by the well-known multi-configuration Dirac-Fock (MCDF) program of Grant and A coworkers. This was used in calculating collision strengths for the 45 {Delta}n = 0 transitions with n=2 in Be-like ions with 8 {le} Z {le} 92. This relativistic collision strength program was also extended to include an option to include the generalized Breis interaction in the scattering matrix elements and the importance of this for He-like, He-like and Li-like ions with Z = 26, 54 and 92 was studied. The factorization method was applied to ionization. Regardless of the complexity of the ion the ionization cross sections could be written as a sum of the products of a readily calculated coefficient that depends only on ion properties and a hydrogen-like cross section. Work was also done on excitation and ionization by directive and, in some cases spin-polarized electrons, which is of interest for some EBIT experiments and the study of solar flares. We also used our extensive collision strength results to test the