Rapid Access to Empirical Impact Ionization Cross Sections for Atoms and Ions across the Periodic Table

Abstract

Electron-impact ionization (EII) processes are essential for modelling high-temperature plasma in quite different research areas, from astrophysics to material science to plasma and fusion research and in several places elsewhere. In most, if not all, of these fields, partial and total EII cross sections are required, and often for a good range of electron energies, in order to determine, for instance, the level population of ions and spectral line intensities in plasma under both local and non-local thermodynamic equilibrium conditions. To obey these needs, various kinds of semi-empirical EII cross sections have been applied in practice, often simply because of the large computational demands in dealing explicitly with two free electrons within the continuum. Here, we expand Jac, the Jena Atomic Calculator, to provide such empirical EII cross sections for (most) atoms and ions across the periodic table. Five empirical models from the recent literature have been implemented to support a simple and rapid access to the partial EII cross sections for electrons from a (partly filled) shell (nℓ)q as well as the total ionization cross sections. We here restrict ourselves to the direct part of the EII cross section, whereas the impact excitation of electrons with subsequent autoionization and the resonant electron capture with double autoionization have been left aside in this first implementation. Rapid access to the (direct) EII cross sections will help already to better understand the role of electron-impact processes in the diagnostics of fusion plasma or the interpretation of astrophysical spectra.

Keywords

• atoms and ions
• binary-encounter approximation
• electron-impact ionization
• empirical model
• impact ionization cross section
• inner-shell ionization