Superconfiguration widths and their effects on atomic models

Superconfigurations are an important component of many of the collisional-radiative atomic models that are used to predict the properties of atoms and ions in non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) plasmas. In this paper, we investigate the statistical properties of superconfigurations and derive expressions for their approximate average energies and energy variances based on one-electron orbital energies. We also explore the effects of using finite-width superconfigurations in screened hydrogenic and hybrid-structure atomic kinetics models.