Recent Excitation, Charge Exchange, and Lifetime Results in Highly Charged Ions Relevant to Stellar, Interstellar, Solar and Comet Phenomena

Recent JPL absolute excitation and charge exchange cross sections, and measurements of lifetimes of metastable levels in highly-charged ions (HCIs) are reported. These data provide benchmark comparisons to results of theoretical calculations. Theoretical approaches can then be used to calculate the vast array of data which cannot be measured due to experimental constraints. Applications to the X-ray emission from comets are given

Measurement and Calculation of Absolute Single and Multiple Charge Exchange Cross Sections for Fe^(q+) Ions Impacting H_2O

Charge exchange (CE) plays a fundamental role in the collisions of solar- and stellar-wind ions with lunar and planetary exospheres, comets, and circumstellar clouds. Reported herein are absolute cross sections for single, double, triple, and quadruple CE of Fe^(q+) (q = 5-13) ions with H_2O at a collision energy of 7q keV. One measured value of the pentuple CE is also given for Fe^(9+) ions. An electron cyclotron resonance ion source is used to provide currents of the highly charged Fe ions. Absolute data are derived from knowledge of the target gas pressure, target path length, and incident and charge-exchanged ion currents. Experimental cross sections are compared with new results of the n-electron classical trajectory Monte Carlo approximation. The radiative and non-radiative cascades following electron transfers are approximated using scaled hydrogenic transition probabilities and scaled Auger rates. Also given are estimates of cross sections for single capture, and multiple capture followed by autoionization, as derived from the extended overbarrier model. These estimates are based on new theoretical calculations of the vertical ionization potentials of H_2O up to H_2O^(10+)

The Structure of Alkali Halide Dimers: A Critical Test of Ionic Models and New Ab Initio Results

In semiempirical ionic models a number of adjustable parameters have to be fitted to experimental data of either monomer molecules or crystals. This leads to strong correlations between these constants and prevents a unique test and a clear physical interpretation of the fit parameters. Moreover, it is not clear whether these constants remain unchanged when the model is applied to dimers or larger clusters. It is shown that these correlations can be substantially reduced when reliable information about dimers is available from experiments or ab initio calculations. Starting with Dunham coefficients of the monomer potential determined from microwave measurements, we have calculated the monomer to dimer bond expansion and the bond angle without any additional adjustable parameter. Assuming that the overlap repulsion between nearest neighbors remains unchanged, the bond expansion is mainly determined by the simple Coulomb repulsion between equally charged ions and depends only very little on the effective ion polarizabilities. Deviation of the bond angle from 90° sensitively tests the difference of effective polarizabilities of the two ions. A comparison with previously available data and new ab initio MP2 results presented here for the heavy‐atom containing dimers shows that bond angles can be modeled reasonably well with Seitz–Ruffa corrected Pauling polarizabilities while calculated bond expansions are much too long. This shows that changes of the overlap repulsion term must be considered for reliable predictions of the structure of dimers and larger clusters

Erratum: The Structure of Alkali Halide Dimers: A Critical Test of Ionic Models and New Ab Initio Results

It has come to our attention that some of the ab initio results presented are incorrect due to errors in the Cs and C1 basis sets, and a small error in the binding energy of Rb2F2. The corrected results are presented below for the species that were affected, modifying the results in Table III of the original paper. Only those values which are different from the results of the original Table III are included. Note that some of these results are used for comparison with the ionic models in later tables. In addition, some HF data quoted in Tables V and VI is affected, and the correct values are given in Table II. All the changes in quoted values are small and none of the conclusions drawn in the article are affected, nor are the comparisons with the ionic models significantly affected. However, the error in the C1 basis is what gave rise to the anomalously short M–Cl bond lengths, and the results presented here lead to longer bonds, in somewhat poorer agreement with the experimental results for Cl containing species

Simultaneous Swift X-ray and UV views of comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin)

We present an analysis of simultaneous X-Ray and UV observations ofcomet C/2007 N3 (Lulin) taken on three days between January 2009 and March 2009 using the Swift observatory. For our X-ray observations, we used basic transforms to account for the movement of the comet to allow the combination of all available data to produce an exposure-corrected image. We fit a simple model to the extracted spectrum and measured an X-ray flux of 4.3+/-1.3 * 10^-13 ergs cm-2 s-1 in the 0.3 to 1.0 keV band. In the UV, we acquired large-aperture photometry and used a coma model to derive water production rates given assumptions regarding the distribution of water and its dissociation into OH molecules about the comet's nucleus. We compare and discuss the X-ray and UV morphology of the comet. We show that the peak of the cometary X-ray emission is offset sunward of the UV peak emission, assumed to be the nucleus, by approximately 35,000 km. The offset observed, the shape of X-ray emission and the decrease of the X-ray emission comet-side of the peak, suggested that the comet was indeed collisionally thick to charge exchange, as expected from our measurements of the comet's water production rate (6--8 10^28 mol. s-1). The X-ray spectrum is consistent with solar wind charge exchange emission, and the comet most likely interacted with a solar wind depleted of very highly ionised oxygen. We show that the measured X-ray lightcurve can be very well explained by variations in the comet's gas production rates, the observing geometry and variations in the solar wind flux.Comment: Paper accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 6 March 2012, 12 pages, 8 colour figures, one tabl

Assessment of Cytomegalovirus-Specific Cell-Mediated Immunity for the Prediction of Cytomegalovirus Disease in High-Risk Solid-Organ Transplant Recipients: A Multicenter Cohort Study

In high-risk solid-organ transplant recipients receiving antiviral prophylaxis, the measurement of specific cell-mediated immunity using the Quantiferon assay appropriately stratified the individual risk of developing subsequent cytomegalovirus diseas

Assessment of cytomegalovirus-specific cell-mediated immunity for the prediction of cytomegalovirus disease in high-risk solid-organ transplant recipients: a multicenter cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease remains an important problem in solid-organ transplant recipients, with the greatest risk among donor CMV-seropositive, recipient-seronegative (D(+)/R(-)) patients. CMV-specific cell-mediated immunity may be able to predict which patients will develop CMV disease. METHODS: We prospectively included D(+)/R(-) patients who received antiviral prophylaxis. We used the Quantiferon-CMV assay to measure interferon-γ levels following in vitro stimulation with CMV antigens. The test was performed at the end of prophylaxis and 1 and 2 months later. The primary outcome was the incidence of CMV disease at 12 months after transplant. We calculated positive and negative predictive values of the assay for protection from CMV disease. RESULTS: Overall, 28 of 127 (22%) patients developed CMV disease. Of 124 evaluable patients, 31 (25%) had a positive result, 81 (65.3%) had a negative result, and 12 (9.7%) had an indeterminate result (negative mitogen and CMV antigen) with the Quantiferon-CMV assay. At 12 months, patients with a positive result had a subsequent lower incidence of CMV disease than patients with a negative and an indeterminate result (6.4% vs 22.2% vs 58.3%, respectively; P < .001). Positive and negative predictive values of the assay for protection from CMV disease were 0.90 (95% confidence interval [CI], .74-.98) and 0.27 (95% CI, .18-.37), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This assay may be useful to predict if patients are at low, intermediate, or high risk for the development of subsequent CMV disease after prophylaxis. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: NCT00817908