Plasma code for astrophysical charge exchange emission at X-ray wavelengths

Abstract

Charge exchange X-ray emission provides unique insight into the interactions between cold and hot astrophysical plasmas. Besides its own profound science, this emission is also technically crucial to all observations in the X-ray band, since charge exchange with the solar wind often contributes a significant foreground component that contaminates the signal of interest. By approximating the cross sections resolved to n and l atomic subshells and carrying out complete radiative cascade calculation, we have created a new spectral code to evaluate the charge exchange emission in the X-ray band. Compared to collisional thermal emission, charge exchange radiation exhibits enhanced lines from large-n shells to the ground, as well as large forbidden-to-resonance ratios of triplet transitions. Our new model successfully reproduces an observed high-quality spectrum of comet C/2000 WM1 (LINEAR), which emits purely by charge exchange between solar wind ions and cometary neutrals. It demonstrates that a proper charge exchange model will allow us to probe the ion properties remotely, including charge state, dynamics, and composition, at the interface between the cold and hot plasmas.