The role of inner-shell excitations in electron recombination with multiply charged complex ions

Abstract

We performed an overview of the inner shell excitation phenomena in the study of electron recombination with multiply charged complex ions such as Au$^{q+}$ (q=49-52) and Pb$^{53+}$. It is found the the inner shell excitations play a significant role in the low energy electron recombination. Taking into account these inner shell excitations we have calculated the energy avaraged capture cross sections. The dielectronic rate coefficients are found to be in good agreement with the experiment. We show that the contribution from the inner-shell enhances the recombinmation rate by an order of magitude. We also made an attempt to identify the resonaces observed by the experiment in Au$^{50+}$ and Pb$^{53+}$. A prediction is made for the rate enhancement in Au$^{52+}$ in which we found the configuration mixing between the doubly and the complex multiply excited states. Analyzing the statistics of eigenstate components we estimated the spreading width is about 0.85 a.u. which defines the energy range within which strong mixing takes place.