Electron excitation rates among fine structure levels in O III

Electron collision strengths have been calculated for 146 transitions among the fine-structure levels in O III using a suitable transformation of LS coupling reactance matrix elements computed with the R-matrix method. These have been obtained at a fine energy grid in an energy region below 5.16 Ry and are found to be varying with electron energy, exhibiting a complicated resonance structure in almost the entire energy range. These have been averaged over a Maxwellian distribution of electron energies to get the effective collision strengths which are very simply related to the excitation and the de-excitation rate coefficients. The results are tabulated in a temperature region below 60,000 K. These are the first extensive results in the literature and are believed to be highly useful for astrophysical plasma diagnostics.