Modeling penetrating collisions in the standard line broadening impact theory for hydrogen

Abstract

Spectral lines emitted by plasmas provide information about the thermodynamic conditions, the degree of randomness or the interactions prevailing in the medium. Collisions by plasma electrons penetrating the extent of bound-electron wavefunctions is important at high density, where short-range interactions become dominant. Such collisions are usually not taken into account properly in the standard lineshape theory, assuming long-range dipole approximation. The formalism of penetrating collisions for hydrogen relies on the introduction of a family of integrals calculated using a recursion relation. In this work, we show that such integrals can be expressed analytically, as a finite sum involving binomial coefficients and modified Bessel functions of the third kind. The explicit expression enabled us to obtain a simple approximate analytical form for the collision operator, making numerical implementation and physical interpretation easier. We also propose simple analytical forms of coefficients and integrals important for the modeling of penetrating collisions.