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Partial Radiative Recombination Cross Sections For Excited States Of Hydrogen, Patricia M. Fazio

Physics Theses & Dissertations

In calculating the radiative recombination cross sections for interstellar H II regions usually only the electric dipole term in the expansion of the interaction Hamiltonian is kept. However, conditions present in these regions permit recombination into highly excited states and the "effective size" of the atom is not much less than the wavelength of the emitted photon. These physical conditions do not meet the requirements for making the dipole approximation. A higher order approximation is to keep an additional term in the expansion of the Hamiltonian, and, therefore, to include contributions of quadrupole transitions in the calculation of the partial …