Collisional–radiative studies of carbon plasmas

A detailed plasma kinetics model for carbon is presented which has been calculated using the Los Alamos suite of atomic kinetics codes. Models have been generated in the configuration-average approximation and the fine-structure approximation, which includes configuration-interaction and intermediate-coupling effects. These models have been used to generate relevant plasma quantities, ranging from the average ionization stage to detailed emission spectra. For many of the quantities examined, and for certain plasma conditions, significant differences exist between the configuration-average model and the detailed fine-structure model, indicating that such a detailed fine-structure model is necessary to accurately model atomic properties in such plasmas.