Dielectronic recombination of light Be-like and B-like ions

Dielectronic recombination cross sections from the ground and metastable states of the Be-like ions C 2+ , O 4+ and F 5+ , and the B-like ions O 3+ and F 4+ , have been calculated and compared with experimental results obtained by a merged-beams technique. The comparison of theory and experiment is complicated by the presence of weak electric fields in the interaction region. However, the authors qualitatively explain the main features of their experimental results. In particular, for Be-like ions they find evidence of a large contribution from the initial 2s2p 3 P metastable state recombining into an Auger metastable final state.