Atomic and Molecular Collisional Radiative Modeling for Spectroscopy of Low Temperature and Magnetic Fusion Plasmas

The quantitative analysis of spectroscopic data from low temperature plasmas is strongly supported from collisional radiative (CR) modeling. Low pressure plasmas for basic research in the lab and for industrial use have several aspects in common with the cold edge of magnetic fusion plasmas. On the basis of applications of CR modeling for atomic and molecular hydrogen, molecular nitrogen, and diatomic radicals such as CH and C2, the relevance of individual processes for data interpretation is demonstrated for ionizing and recombining plasmas. Examples of such processes are opacity, dissociative excitation, dissociative recombination, mutual neutralization, and energy pooling. It is shown that the benchmark of CR modeling with experimental data can be used to identify problems in the ingoing data set of cross sections and rate coefficients. Using the flexible solver Yacora, the capability of CR modeling of low temperature plasmas is highlighted.