Ejected material from neutron star mergers give rise to electromagnetic emission powered by radioactive decays of r-process nuclei, which is so called kilonova or macronova. While properties of the emission are largely affected by opacities in the ejected material, available atomic data for r-process elements are still limited. We perform atomic structure calculations for r-process elements: Se (Z = 34), Ru (Z = 44), Te (Z = 52), Ba (Z = 56), Nd (Z = 60), and Er (Z = 68). We confirm that the opacities from bound-bound transitions of open f-shell, Lanthanide elements (Nd and Er) are higher than those of the other elements over a wide wavelength range. The opacities of open s-shell (Ba), p-shell (Se and Te), and d-shell (Ru) elements are lower than those of open f-shell elements and their transitions are concentrated in the ultraviolet wavelengths. We show that the optical brightness can be different by > 2 mag depending on the element abundances in the ejecta such that post-merger, Lanthanide-free ejecta produce brighter and bluer optical emission. Such blue emission from post-merger ejecta can be observed from the polar directions if the mass of the preceding dynamical ejecta in these regions is small. For the ejecta mass of 0.01 M ⊙ , observed magnitudes of the blue emission will reach 21.0 mag (100 Mpc) and 22.5 mag (200 Mpc) in g and r bands within a few days after the merger, which are detectable with 1m or 2m-class telescopes.

Coalescence of binary neutron star give rise to electromagnetic emission, kilonova, powered by radioactive decays of r-process nuclei. Observations of kilonova associated with GW170817 provided unique opportunity to study the heavy element synthesis in the Universe. However, atomic data of r-process elements to decipher the light curves and spectral features of kilonova are not fully constructed yet. In this paper, we perform extended atomic calculations of neodymium (Nd, Z = 60) to study the impact of accuracies in atomic calculations to the astrophysical opacities. By employing multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock and relativistic configuration interaction methods, we calculate energy levels and transition data of electric dipole transitions for Nd II, Nd III, and Nd IV ions. Compared with previous calculations, our new results provide better agreement with the experimental data. The accuracy of energy levels was achieved in the present work 10 %, 3 % and 11 % for Nd II, Nd III and Nd IV, respectively, comparing with the NIST database. We confirm that the overall properties of the opacity are not significantly affected by the accuracies of the atomic calculations. The impact to the Planck mean opacity is up to a factor of 1.5, which affects the timescale of kilonova at most 20%. However, we find that the wavelength dependent features in the opacity are affected by the accuracies of the calculations. We emphasize that accurate atomic calculations, in particular for low-lying energy levels, are important to provide predictions of kilonova light curves and spectra.

The contribution to electron-impact ionization cross sections from excitations to high-nl shells and a consequent autoionization is investigated. We perform relativistic subconfiguration-average and detailed level-to-level calculations for this process. Ionization cross sections for the W27+ ion are presented to illustrate the large influence of the high shells (n ^ 9) and orbitals (/ > 4) in the excitation-autoionization process. The obtained results show that the excitations to the high shells (n ^ 9) increase cross sections of the indirect ionization process by a factor of 2 compared to the excitations to the lower shells (n < 8). The excitations to the shells with orbital quantum number l = 4 give the largest contribution compared with the other orbital quantum numbers /. Radiative damping reduces the cross sections of the indirect process approximately twofold in the case of the level-to-level calculations. Determined data show that the excitation-autoionization process contributes approximately 40 % to the total ionization cross sections.

Multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock (MCDHF) calculations and relativistic configuration interaction (RCI) calculations are performed for states of the 3s 2 3p 2 , 3s3p 3 and 3s 2 3p3d configurations in the Si-like ions Ti IX -Ge XIX, Sr XXV, Zr XXVII and Mo XXIX. Valence and core-valence electron correlation effects are accounted for through large configuration state function expansions. Calculated energy levels are compared with data from other calculations and with experimental data from the reference databases. Lifetime and transition rates along with uncertainty estimations are given for all ions. Energies from the calculations are in excellent agreement with observations and computed wavelength are almost of spectroscopic accuracy, aiding line identification in spectra.

The multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock method is employed to calculate atomic electric dipole moments in the ground states of 225 Ra, 199 Hg, and 171 Yb. For the calculations of the matrix elements we extend the relativistic atomic structure package GRASP2K. The extension includes programs to evaluate matrix elements of PT -odd electron-nucleus tensor-pseudotensor and pseudoscalar-scalar interactions, the atomic electric dipole operator, the nuclear Schiff moment, and the interaction of the electron electric dipole moment with nuclear magnetic moments. The interelectronic interactions are accounted for through valence and core-valence electron correlation effects. The electron shell relaxation is included with separately optimized wave functions of opposite parities.