ELECTRON-IMPACT EXCITATION OF COMPLEX ATOMS AND IONS .2. FORBIDDEN TRANSITIONS IN NI+

This letter reports the first application of the new R-matrix program package RMATRX II to electron impact excitation of a near neutral open d-shell ion. In this calculation for Ni+, all states corresponding to the configurations 3d(9), 3d(8)4s and 3d(8)4p have been included in t he expansion of the total wavefunction. Thermally averaged collision s trengths for forbidden transitions involving the even parity states ar e presented in tabular form for temperatures between 5000 K and 20 000 K. The importance of including accurate CI expansions for both the ta rget and the (N+1)electron terms is demonstrated.