Line Broadening Cross Sections for the Broadening of Transitions of Neutral Atoms by Collisions with Neutral Hydrogen

Abstract

Line broadening cross sections for the broadening of spectral lines by collisions with neutral hydrogen atoms have been tabulated by Anstee & O'Mara (1995), Barklem & O'Mara (1997) and Barklem, O'Mara & Ross (1998) for s-p, p-s, p-d, d-p, d-f and f-d transitions. To make these data more accessible to the end user, fortran code which interpolates in these tabulations has been prepared and placed on the World Wide Web. It should be easy to incorporate this code into existing spectrum synthesis programs or to use it in a stand-alone mode to compute line broadening cross sections for specific transitions. The use of the code is demonstrated by its application to two transitions of astrophysical interest.