NASA NTRS2002
There is increasing emphasis during this decade on understanding energy balance and phenomena observed in high electron temperature plasmas. The UV spectral return from FUSE, the X-ray spectral return from the HETG on Chandra and the LETGS 011 XMM-Newton are just beginning. Line emissions are almost entirely from highly-charged ions (HCIs) of C, N, 0, Ne, Mg, S, Si, Ca, and Fe. The Constellation-X mission will provide X-ray spectroscopy up to photon energies of 0.12 nm (10 keV) where primary line emitters will be HCIs. A variety of atomic parameters are required to model the stellar and solar plasma. These include cross sections for excitation, ionization, charge-exchange, X-ray emission, direct and indirect recombination, lifetimes and branching ratios, and dependences on l, m mixing by external E and B fields. In almost all cases the atomic quantities are calculated, and few comparisons to experiment have been carried out. Collision strengths and Einstein A-values are required to convert the observed spectral intensities to electron temperatures and densities in the stellar plasma. The JPL electron energy-loss and merged beam approach has been used to measure absolute collision strengths in a number of ions, with critical comparison made to the best available theories.