Chemi-ionization in Solar Photosphere: Influence on the Hydrogen Atom excited States Population

Abstract

In this paper, the influence of chemi-ionization processes in $H^{\ast }(n\ge 2)+H(1s)$ collisions, as well as the influence of inverse chemi-recombination processes on hydrogen atom excited-state populations in solar photosphere, are compared with the influence of concurrent electron-atom and electron-ion ionization and recombination processes. It has been found that the considered chemi-ionization/recombination processes dominate over the relevant concurrent processes in almost the whole solar photosphere. Thus, it is shown that these processes and their importance for the non-LTE modeling of the solar atmosphere should be investigated further.