Charge correlation effects in electron broadening of ion emitters in hot and dense plasmas

Electron broadening for ion emitters is investigated with a molecular dynamics based spectral line shape simulation. A regularized, Coulomb potential that removes the divergence at short distances is used for the ion-electron interaction. The method presented here allows one to account for all the correlations between charged particles, which is in distinction to the standard electron broadening of the impact approximation. Two cases are considered: first, a single ion impurity embedded into an electron gas is considered; and second, a two-component ion-electron plasma is studied. Simulations show non-negligible charge correlation effects on line shapes opening new possibilities to improve line shape models and interpretations of experiments. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.