Accurate Wavelength Measurements and Modeling of Fe XV to Fe XIX Spectra Recorded in High-Density Plasmas between 13.5 and 17 Å

Iron spectra have been recorded from plasmas created at three different laser plasma facilities: the Tor Vergata University laser in Rome (Italy), the Hercules laser at ENEA in Frascati (Italy), and the Compact Multipulse Terawatt (COMET) laser at LLNL in California (USA). The measurements provide a means of identifying dielectronic satellite lines from Fe XVI and Fe XV in the vicinity of the strong 2p → 3d transitions of Fe XVII. About 80 Δn ≥ 1 lines of Fe XV (Mg-like) to Fe XIX (O-like) were recorded between 13.8 and 17.1 Å with a high spectral resolution (λ/Δλ ≈ 4000); about 30 of these lines are from Fe XVI and Fe XV. The laser-produced plasmas had electron temperatures between 100 and 500 eV and electron densities between 1020 and 1022 cm-3. The Hebrew University Lawrence Livermore Atomic Code (HULLAC) was used to calculate the atomic structure and atomic rates for Fe XV-XIX. HULLAC was used to calculate synthetic line intensities at Te = 200 eV and ne = 1021 cm-3 for three different conditions to illustrate the role of opacity: optically thin plasmas with no excitation-autoionization/dielectronic recombination (EA/DR) contributions to the line intensities, optically thin plasmas that included EA/DR contributions to the line intensities, and optically thick plasmas (optical depth ≈200 μm) that included EA/DR contributions to the line intensities. The optically thick simulation best reproduced the recorded spectrum from the Hercules laser. However, some discrepancies between the modeling and the recorded spectra remain.