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Abstract

We have carried out direct measurements of the absolute recombination rate coefficients of four charge states of tungsten in the range from W¹⁸⁺ to W²¹⁺ in a heavy ion storage ring. We find that the rich atomic fine structure of the open f-shell leads to very high resonant enhancement of the recombination rate at energies below ~50 eV. Even in the higher energy domain relevant to fusion plasma this leads to a recombination rate coefficient that is more than four times higher than predicted by the commonly used ADAS database of recombination rates. In addition to the experimental measurements we have carried out theoretical calculations using Autostructure. For W²⁰⁺ these predict a plasma recombination rate coefficient that agrees much better with the measurement than the ADAS model but still fail to reproduce the experimental data in detail.