STUDY OF ELECTRON AND ATOM INTERACTIONS WITH DIFFERENT ATOMIC SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS TO PLASMA MODELING

Abstract

The investigation of the interaction of the electron or atom/ion with any other atomic system provides information about the nature of their interactions and also renders various types of information regarding the involved atomic structure and the collision dynamics at the fundamental level. In addition, such study plays an important role in several applications, e.g., plasma physics, astrophysics, laser physics, cold atomic physics, fusion research, etc. Therefore, to gain new insights into the subject, more research needs to be carried out for the further development of the field and to explore additional applications. The present thesis aims to cover three such aspects: first, the study of electron-impact fine-structure excitation of highly charged tungsten ions. Second, the development of detailed and reliable collisional radiative (CR) models for important mixture plasmas. Finally, precise calculations of the highly desirable long-range interaction coefficients for the two- and three- atomic systems (atoms/ions). Based on these aspects, the entire work of the thesis is presented in the form of eight chapters. Chapter 1 is introductory in nature which introduces the subject of the thesis and the objectives of the present work. The importance of the study of electron scattering in reference to the plasma characterizations and developing their models are thoroughly discussed. This chapter describes a systematic summary of the various available theoretical methods used for the calculation of electron-impact excitation of atoms/ions, including their merits and demerits. Further, it gives an overview of the collisional radiative plasma model used for low-temperature plasma. In addition, the importance of studying the long-range interatomic interaction between atomic systems and their possible applications are discussed.