Towards the Provision of Accurate Atomic Data for Neutral Iron

Abstract

The rich emission and absorption line spectra of Fe I may be used to extract crucial information on astrophysical plasmas, such as stellar metallicities. There is currently a lack, in quality and quantity, of accurate level-resolved effective electron-impact collision strengths and oscillator strengths for radiative transitions. Here, we discuss the challenges in obtaining an accurate model of the neutral iron atom and compare our theoretical fine-structure energy levels with observation for several increasingly large models. Radiative data is presented for several transitions for which the atomic data is accurately known.

Keywords

• atomic data
• iron
• oscillator strengths