Effects of the electron energy distribution function on modeled x-ray spectra

This paper presents the results of a broad investigation into the effects of the electron energy distribution function on the predictions of nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium collisional-radiative atomic kinetics models. The effects of non-Maxwellian and suprathermal ("hot") electron distributions on collisional rates (including three-body recombination) are studied. It is shown that most collisional rates are fairly insensitive to the functional form and the characteristic (central or average) energy of the electron distribution function as long as the characteristic energy is larger than the threshold energy for the collisional process. Collisional excitation and ionization rates are, however, highly sensitive to the number of hot electrons. This permits the development of robust spectroscopic diagnostics that can be used to characterize the electron density, bulk electron temperature, and hot electron fraction of plasmas with nonequilibrium electron distribution functions. Hot electrons are shown to increase and spread out plasma charge state distributions, amplify the intensities of emission lines fed by direct collisional excitation and radiative cascades, and alter the structure of satellite features in both K- and L-shell spectra. The characteristic energy, functional form, and spatial properties of hot electron distributions in plasmas are open to characterization through their effects on high-energy continuum and line emission and on the polarization of spectral lines.