Electron-impact ionization of Fe14+ and other atomic ions in the Mg isoelectronic sequence Original Research Article

Distorted-wave calculations are carried out for the electron-impact ionization of Fe14+ in both the ground 3s2 1S0 and metastable 3s3p 3P0.2 levels. The cross sections and Maxwellian-average rate coefficients include direct ionization of the 2s, 2p, 3s, and 3p subshells, as well as inner-shell excitations from the 2s and 2p subshells leading to autoionization. The excitation—autoionization contributions are found to be large for both the ground the metastable levels. To assist modeling efforts of moderately dense plasmas, the direct and indirect rate coefficients are resolved as to the final level of the ionization process and assembled in a standard database file. A complete database for selected metallic ions in the Mg isoelectronic sequence will reside in electronic form at the Controlled Fusion Atomic Data Center at ORNL ().