The temperature law for superconfigurations in non-LTE plasmas

It is shown that, in non-LTE hot plasmas, the atomic processes tend to establish a temperature law, i.e., a decreasing-exponential law vs. energy, for the total atomic populations of the configurations within each superconfiguration (SC). The SCs are defined by the occupancy numbers of atomic shells. In the steady-state approximation, the system of collisional-radiative linear equations breaks into two systems, one for the populations of the ground configurations of the SCs, and one for the temperatures of the SCs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.