Effect of Dielectronic Recombination on Electron-Ion Scattering Cross Sections

It is shown that the loss of electron scattering flux through dielectronic recombination can be quite significant for highly charged ions, thus reducing the contribution of autoionizing resonances to scattering cross sections and hence excitation rates. This process is likely to be of importance in analyzing line emission from high-temperature plasmas. Detailed calculations are carried out for O⁶⁺ and Fe²⁴⁺. Employing the present formulation, the averaged cross sections for dielectronic recombination may also be computed.