ENERGY APPROACH TO CONSISTENT QED THEORY FOR CALCULATION OF ELECTRON-COLLISION STRENGTHS - NE-LIKE IONS

An energy approach based on consistent QED theory is outlined which presents the energy of any decaying atomic state in complex form with the imaginary part responsible for different types of decays. The aim is to study, in a uniform manner, elementary processes responsible for emission-line formation in plasmas. The energy approach is generalized here for the collisional problem. Numerical results on electron collisional strengths and rate coefficients for Ne-like ions are presented. It is shown that collisional rate coefficients are close to their maxima at an electron temperature approximately 0.30E(threshold) for iron and approximately 0.15E(threshold) for argon.