A MERL Line Profile Library for Prism Software Tools

Absorption and emission lines from warm dense matter have complicated line profiles due to Stark broadening. The detailed knowledge of the line shape is an important ingredient of opacity models and often provide valuable diagnostic utilities for plasma density and temperature in both emission and absorption spectroscopy. Complex spectroscopic modeling tools often use simplified fitting formula to describe these broadening processes. However, such simplifications often lead to inaccurate line profiles. In this work, we present a numerical line profile library obtained with detailed calculations using the Multi-Electron Radiator Line-shape (MERL) code. MERL is based on standard theory of Stark broadening, and includes effects of both plasma dynamic electrons and static ions. The numerical library tabulates line widths of individual spectral lines on a grid of plasma density and temperature. Important K-shell and L-shell transitions, including satellite transitions of low to mid Z elements up to Krypton are covered. The suite of spectral modeling tools (PrismSPECT, Spect3D, Helios-CR) developed at the Prism Computational Sciences have been updated to use this library to model the line broadening for both absorption and emission spectroscopy.