This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). A general and effective program for electron and photon interactions with atoms, ions, and molecules is being developed by extending a highly successful B-spline R-matrix (BSR) approach produced during previous funding periods. Specifally, the work involves the following projects:  1) Adapting the existing BSR program and a newly developed fully relativistic Dirac-based DBSR code to massively parallel computing platforms provided by the NSF's TeraGrid resources;  2) Performing benchmark calculations for electron collisions with complex targets; 3) Developing a fully relativistic R-matrix with pseudo-states (RMPS) version;  4) Developing a general method to treat time-dependent intense short-pulse laser interactions with complex targets;  5) Extending the code to treat charged-particle projectiles and molecular targets.
The broader impact of this research consists of the further development of a suite of computer programs to calculate accurate atomic data for a wide variety of electron- and photon-driven processes. The production calculations will focus on atomic targets, for which these data are of critical value to model the physics and chemistry of astrophysical and laboratory plasmas, lasers, and planetary atmospheres. This effort supports many experimental projects ranging from industrial lighting systems to fundamental research performed at next-generation synchrotons and free-electron lasers. The next version of the computer code will be documented so that it can made available to the public. Finally, undergraduate students are being trained through developing and testing individual modules of the package.Â
