Dielectronic Recombination Of Iron M-shell Ions Motivated By Absorption Features In AGN Spectra

XMM-Newton and Chandra observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) show spectra rich with X-ray absorption features. These observations have detected a broad unresolved transition array (UTA) between 15-17 Å. This is attributed to inner-shell photoexcitation of M-shell iron ions. Modeling these UTA features is currently limited by uncertainties in the low-temperature dielectronic recombination (DR) data for M-shell iron. In order to resolve this issue, and to provide reliable iron M-shell DR data for plasma modeling, we are carrying out a series of laboratory measurements using the heavy-ion Test Storage Ring (TSR) at the Max-Plank-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. We use the DR data obtained at TSR, to calculate rate coefficients for plasma modeling. We are also providing our data to atomic theorist to benchmark their DR calculations. Here we report our recent experimental results for DR for several iron M-shell ions and plans for future work.

This work has been supported in part by NASA, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, and the German Research Council