ENERGY APPROACH TO CONSISTENT QED THEORY FOR CALCULATION OF ELECTRON-COLLISION STRENGTHS - NE-LIKE IONS

An energy approach based on consistent QED theory is outlined which pr esents the energy of any decaying atomic state in complex form with th e imaginary part responsible for different types of decays. The aim is to study, in a uniform manner, elementary processes responsible for e mission-line formation in plasmas. The energy approach is generalized here for the collisional problem. Numerical results on electron collis ional strengths and rate coefficients for Ne-like ions are presented. It is shown that collisional rate coefficients are close to their maxi ma at an electron temperature approximately 0.30E(threshold) for iron and approximately 0.15E(threshold) for argon.