Atomic Processes, Including Photoabsorption, Subject to Outside Charge-Neutral Plasma

Abstract

We present in this review our recent theoretical studies on atomic processes subject to the plasma environment including the α and β emissions and the ground state photoabsorption of the one- and two-electron atoms and ions. By carefully examining the spatial and temporal criteria of the Debye–Hückel (DH) approximation based on the classical Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics, we were able to represent the plasma effect with a Debye–Hückel screening potential VDH in terms of the Debye length D, which is linked to the ratio between the plasma density N and its temperature kT. Our theoretical data generated with VDH from the detailed non-relativistic and relativistic multiconfiguration atomic structure calculations compare well with the limited measured results from the most recent experiments. Starting from the quasi-hydrogenic picture, we were able to show qualitatively that the energy shifts of the emission lines could be expressed in terms of a general expression as a function of a modified parameter, i.e., the reduced Debye length λ. The close agreement between theory and experiment from our study may help to facilitate the plasma diagnostics to determine the electron density and the temperature of the outside plasma.