Benchmarking Current Capabilities for the Generation of Excitation and Photoionisation Atomic Data

Abstract

The spectra currently emerging from modern ground- and space-based astronomical instruments are of exceptionally high quality and resolution. To meaningfully analyse these spectra, researchers utilise complex modelling codes to replicate the observations. The main inputs to these codes are atomic data such as excitation and photoionisation cross sections, as well as radiative transition probabilities, energy levels, and line strengths. In this publication, the current capabilities of the numerical methods and computer packages used in the generation of these data are discussed. Particular emphasis is given to Fe-peak species and the heavy systems of tungsten and molybdenum. Some of the results presented to highlight certain issues and/or advances have already been published in the literature, while other sections present new recently evaluated atomic data for the first time.

Resolving Ultrafast Spin-Orbit Dynamics in Heavy Many-Electron Atoms

“…ĤD (t) is the time-dependent dipole operator which describes the interaction of the laser with all electrons. To implement ĤSO we require semi-relativistic atomic data input, which we obtain from the fully ab initio, and widely used RMatrixI package [13,22,23]. Hence all aspects of the spin-orbit interaction are taken into account, including the effect on both the angular and radial aspects of the wavefunction.…”