Inner-shell Absorption Lines of Fe~VI-- Fe~XVI: A Many-body Perturbation Theory Approach

Abstract

We provide improved atomic calculation of wavelengths, oscillator strengths, and autoionization rates relevant to the $2\to 3$ inner-shell transitions of Fe~VI--XVI, the so-called Fe~M-shell unresolved transition array (UTA). A second order many-body perturbation theory is employed to obtain accurate transition wavelengths, which are systematically larger than previous theoretical results by 15--45~mÅ. For a few transitions of Fe~XVI and Fe~XV where laboratory measurements exist, our new wavelengths are accurate to within a few mÅ. Using these new calculations, the apparent discrepancy in the velocities between the Fe~M-shell UTA and other highly ionized absorption lines in the outflow of NGC 3783 disappears. The oscillator strengths in our new calculation agree well with the previous theoretical data, while the new autoionization rates are significantly larger, especially for lower charge states. We attribute this discrepancy to the missing autoionization channels in the previous calculation. The increased autoionization rates may slightly affect the column density analysis of the Fe~M-shell UTA for sources with high column density and very low turbulent broadening. The complete set of atomic data is provided as an electronic table.