Electron-impact excitation of neutral Rubidium using the Dirac B-Spline R-Matrix method

Diode pumped alkali lasers (DPALs) have many applications, including fundamental research, advanced manufacturing, and defense systems. The DPAL active medium is a mixture of a vapor of neutral alkali atoms and buffer gases, with Rubidium being a common selection for the neutral alkali [1]. To better understand the operation of DPALs, and to develop new applications for them, it is important to have accurate collisional data to create plasma models for the Rubidium vapor. One important component of this data is electron-impact excitation cross sections of neutral Rubidium. In this work, we seek to determine these cross sections of Rb using the Dirac B-Spline atomic R-Matrix suite of codes [2,3]. An initial atomic structure description of Rb⁺ is generated using DBSR_HF, a B-Spline Dirac-Hartree-Fock program [4]. Bound states of Rb, and subsequently the cross sections, are determined using the DBSR suite. Relevant Rb atomic structure data, which can be used as input for DBSR calculations, will be made available on the AMOSGateway [5], where interested parties can perform their own cross section calculations.

 

 

[1] W. F. Krupke, Prog. Quantum Electron. 36 (2012) 4-28

[2] O. Zatsarinny and K. Bartschat, Phys. Rev. A 77 (2008) 062701

[3] O. Zatsarinny, https://github.com/zatsaroi

[4] O. Zatsarinny and C. Froese Fischer, Comp. Phys. Commun. 202 (2016) 287-303

[5] https://amosgateway.org/