Unified line profiles for hydrogen perturbed by collisions with protons: satellites and asymmetries

TL;DR

This paper introduces new unified line profile calculations for hydrogen perturbed by proton collisions, revealing satellites and asymmetries crucial for accurate atmospheric modeling.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive calculations for multiple hydrogen lines including quasi-molecular effects, enhancing the accuracy of spectral line modeling.

Findings

Profiles include satellites and asymmetries not captured by Stark broadening.

Data covers Lyman series up to Lymanδ and Balmer series up to Balmer10.

Results are available online for use in atmosphere models.

Abstract

We present new calculations of unified line profiles for hydrogen perturbed by collisions with protons. We report on new calculations of the potential energies and dipole moments which allow the evaluation of profiles for the lines of the Lyman series up to Lyman$\delta$ and the Balmer series up to Balmer10. Unified calculations only existed for the lines Lyman$\alpha$ to Lyman$\gamma$ and Balmer$\alpha$ including the H$_2^+$ quasi-molecule. These data are available as online material accompanying this paper and should be included in atmosphere models, in place of the Stark effect of protons, since the quasi-molecular contributions cause not only satellites, but large asymmetries that are unaccounted for in models that assume Stark broadening of electrons and protons are equal.