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Abstract

Spectra in the extreme ultraviolet range from 107 to 353 Å emitted from Fe ions in various ionization stages have been observed at the Heidelberg electron beam ion trap (EBIT) with a flat-field grating spectrometer. A series of transition lines and their intensities have been analyzed and compared with collisional-radiative simulations. The present collisional-radiative model reproduces well the relative line intensities and facilitates line identification of ions produced in the EBIT. The polarization effect on the line intensities resulting from nonthermal unidirectional electron impact was explored and found to be significant (up to 24%) for a few transition lines. Based upon the observed line intensities, relative charge state distributions (CSD) of ions were determined, which peaked at Fe23+ tailing toward lower charge states. Another simulation on ion charge distributions including the ionization and electron capture processes generated CSDs which are in general agreement with the measurements. By observing intensity ratios of specific lines from levels collisionally populated directly from the ground state and those starting from the metastable levels of Fe XXI, Fe X and other ionic states, the effective electron densities were extracted and found to depend on the ionic charge. Furthermore, it was found that the overlap of the ion cloud with the electron beam estimated from the effective electron densities strongly depends on the charge state of the ion considered, i.e. under the same EBIT conditions, higher charge ions show less expansion in the radial direction.