Electron-impact excitation of Ni II: Effective collision strengths for optically allowed fine-structure transitions

In this paper, we present collision strengths and Maxwellian averaged effective collision strengths for the electron-impact excitation of Ni II. Attention is expressly concentrated on the optically allowed fine-structure transitions between the 3d 9, 3d 84s, and 3d 74s 2 even parity levels and the 3d 84p and 3d 74s 4p odd parity levels. The parallel RMATRXII R-matrix package has been recently extended to allow for the inclusion of relativistic fine-structure effects. This suite of codes has been utilized in conjunction with the parallel PSTGF and PSTGICF programs in order to compute converged total collision strengths for the allowed transitions with which this study is concerned. All 113 LS terms identified with the 3d 9, 3d 84s, 3d 74s 2, 3d 84p, and 3d 74s 4p basis configurations were included in the target wavefunction representation, giving rise to a sophisticated 295 jj-level, 1930 coupled channel scattering complex. Maxwellian averaged effective collision strengths have been computed at 30 individual electron temperatures ranging from 30 to 1,000,000 K. This range comfortably encompasses all temperatures significant to astrophysical and plasma applications. The convergence of the collision strengths is exhaustively investigated and comparisons are made with previous theoretical works, where significant discrepancies exist for the majority of transitions. We conclude that intrinsic in achieving converged collision strengths and thus effective collision strengths for the allowed transitions is the combined inclusion of contributions from the (N + 1) partial waves extending to a total angular momentum value of L = 50 and further contributions from even higher partial waves accomplished by employing a "top-up" procedure.

Electron-impact excitation of Sc II: collision strengths and effective collision strengths for fine-structure transitions.

Accurate fine-structure atomic data for the Fe-peak elements are essential for interpreting astronomical spectra. There is a severe paucity of data available for Sc II, highlighted by the fact that no collision strengths are readily available for this ion. We present electron-impact excitation collision strengths and Maxwellian averaged effective collision strengths for Sc II. The collision strengths were calculated for all 3916 transitions amongst 89 jj levels (arising from the 3d4s, 3d2, 4s2, 3d4p, 4s4p, 3d5s, 3d4d, 3d5p, 4p2 and 3d4f configurations), resulting in a 944 coupled channel problem. The R-matrix package RMATRXII was utilized, along with the transformation code FINE and the external region code PSTGF, to calculate the collision strengths for a range of incident electron energies in the 0 to 8.3 Rydberg region. Maxwellian averaged effective collision strengths were then produced for 27 temperatures lying within the astrophysically significant range of 30 to 105 K.
The collision strengths and effective collision strengths were produced for two different target models. The purpose was to systematically examine the effect of including open 3p correlation terms into the configuration interaction expansion for the wavefunction. The first model consisted of all 36 CI terms that could be generated with the 3p core closed. The second model incorporated an additional six configurations which allowed for single-electron excitations from within the 3p core. Comparisons are made between the two models and the results of Bautista et al., obtained by private communication. It is concluded that the first model produced the most reliable set of collision and effective collision strengths for use in astrophysical and plasma applications.