Speaker
Description
Atomic cascades occur frequently in Nature owing to the interaction of matter with particles and light. Such step-wise changes of an atomic and/or ionic ensemble are often “caused” by either the excitation of inner-shell electrons due to photon, electron, or particle impact, or by the capture of electron(s) into Rydberg orbitals as observed in many astrophysical environments [1].
In practice, most of these (atomic) cascades exhibit a rather high complexity, even if just the dominant decay pathes are to be taken into account. This complexity arises first of all from the large number of decay paths that a (many-particle) quantum system may take. To systematically model such cascades, we have expanded JAC, the Jena Atomic Calculator [2], that supports the calculation of different atomic shell structures and processes. To model the excitation and subsequent decay of atoms and ions, we have classified and implemented a number of atomic cascade schemes [3] within the framework of JAC. These schemes include photo excitation and ionization, electron-impact excitation and ionization, various electron-capture cascades, or simply the efficient computation of associated plasma rate coefficients.
[1] S. Fritzsche, P. Palmeri and S. Schippers, Symmetry 13, 520 (2021).
[2] S. Fritzsche, Comp. Phys. Commun. 240, 1 (2019).
[3] S. Fritzsche et al., Eur. J. Phys. D 78, 75 (2024).
