Population inversion in plasmas generated during recombination cascades.
The collisional-radiative model for hydrogenlike ions is used to investigate the scaling of recombination at low temperatures in order to identify the necessary conditions of electron density and temperature, which will allow population inversion between the first excited state and the ground state to be developed. Numerical calculations show that at low temperatures the population growth in the hydrogenic states can be represented by similarity relations. The physical origin of these forms is presented. A table of minimum densities at which inversion will occur is given as a function of temperature for ions of arbitrary atomic number.
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Physics Department, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom.