Astronomers require the following basic atomic data: energy levels and wavelengths’, radiative transition probabilities; cross sections for photo-ionisation and for collisional processes; and line profile parameters. They also require processed data such as: level populations; opacities; radiation forces; line emissivities; and collisional rate-coefficients.

Many of the data used by astronomers come from theoretical work. Experimental work is of importance in determining accurate wavelengths, in providing essential checks on theory for radiative probabilities and collision rates, and in the determination of line-profile parameters. Experimental studies are particularly important for processes of collisional ionisation.

Considerable effort has been made recently by international collaborations, exploiting advances in atomic physics and in supercomputing, to compute complete sets of accurate data for astrophysically important processes; in particular, the Opacity Project and the IRON Project.

The Opacity Project computed atomic data for opacity calculations

1. • for H, He, Li, Be, B, C, N, O, F, Ne, Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Ar, Ca, Fe.

2. • energies of terms having effective quantum numbers v≤10 and total angular momentum L≤3 or 4, all spin and parity combinations;

3. • gƒ-values for all dipole transitions between these bound terms;

4. • total cross sections for photoionizaion from all calculated bound terms, tabulated on a grid of photon energies suitable to describe the resonance structure in sufficient detail to calculate reliable opacities;

5. • line broadening parameters.

28 key research papers arising from the Project, together with calculated energies and oscillator strengths for light ions, are reprinted in ‘The Opacity Project Volume 1’ (Opacity Project Team, 1994, IOP Publ. ISBN 0 7503 0288 7). All data are available from TOPbase, an on-line database at the CDS (Cunto et al. 1993, A&A 275, L5).

The IRON Project aims to systematically compute electron excitation cross sections for the iron group of elements. Particular attention is given to requirements for the interpretation of data from specific space observations.

In the first stage of the Project excitation cross sections have been computed for fine-structure transitions in the ground configuration of all ions of astrophysical interest. These data are essential for the interpretation of IR lines to be observed by ISO, as well as for coronal spectra.

The OPAL opacity effort was undertaken in 1985 in response to speculation that the existing opacity data were not of sufficient accuracy to model observed stellar properties. We have taken the view that a completely new code with improved equation of state, atomic physics and line broadening was required. It was apparent that the most computationally intensive part of the calculations would be to obtain the vast amount of atomic data needed for the bound-bound and bound-free absorption cross-sections. To meet this challenge we developed a parametric potential method, that was fast enough to allow on-line calculations, while achieving accuracy comparable to that of the single-configuration Dirac-Fock method. This on-line capability was also chosen to allow flexibility to study the effect of various coupling and data averaging methods. It also makes it easy to study the effect of adding more elements.

The OPAL equation of state is based on the many-body statistical mechanics of partially ionized plasmas in the grand canonical ensemble. This is the so-called “physical picture” method. In this approach one works directly with the electrons and nuclei present in the plasma. The effect of the plasma environment on the internal states is obtained directly from the statistical mechanical analysis. A convergent partition function is a natural consequence of this approach.

OPAL includes degeneracy and plasma collective effects in the free-free absorption using a screened form of the parametric potentials. Similar corrections to the Thomson scattering are obtained from the method of Boercker (1987). The spectral line broadening for one, two and three electrons ions are obtained from a suite of codes provided by R.W. Lee (1988) that include linear Stark theory. For all other transitions we use Voigt profiles where the Gaussian width is due to Doppler broadening and the Lorentz width is due to the natural width plus fits to the electron impact collision width (Dimitrievic and Konjevic 1980).

Weak lines, being unsaturated, are particularly important for the determination of interstellar abundances of elements. From a theoretical point of view, there are several possible causes of an electric dipole transition having a small oscillator strength. In some cases, several contributions to the dipole matrix element substantially cancel (e.g. the 1808 Å line Si II), while in other cases, the oscillator strength would be zero but for the inclusion of small relativistic effects (e.g. the intersystem 1909 Å line in C. II).

For weak lines, the interstellar abundances depend on the oscillator strength (calculated or measured) and the equivalent width (observed). The increased resolution of the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope provides for many lines equivalent widths of much greater precision than was previously available. This situation presents a challenge to theorists to improve the quality of their calculations of oscillator strengths.

Such calculations are difficult for weak transitions, especially when the cause is cancellation. Of course, with larger and more powerful computer a vailable, it is possible to undertake more extensive calculations. But the quality of observational data now makes it imperative for theorists not merely to do a better calculation than before, but to give a considered estimate of the accuracy of the results. Since there are no effective theoretical methods for obtaining rigorous bounds to oscillator strengths which could give a useful guide to accuracy, theoretical estimates of accuracy can be achieved only by undertaking a systematic sequence of calculations of increasing complexity, while ensuring that no significant contributions to the calculations are omitted.

In total, 40 neutral diatomic molecules, 2 molecular ions, and 7 polyatomic molecules are known from observed photospheric stellar spectra. Line data for opacity computations (i.e., lists of line frequencies, intensities, and excitation energies) exist for 17 of these molecules, although the data are complete only for a handful of them. A detailed description of stellar photospheric molecules can be found in Tsuji (1986), and the existing opacity data have been reviewed by Jorgensen (1995).

Listed line frequencies in the data bases are either the measured values, or based on computed molecular constants obtained from fits to measured values. Attempts to compute ab initio line frequencies have so far resulted in lower accuracy than what is obtained by use of molecular constants. Published line strengths include measured values as well as ab initio values. For strong bands the ab initio intensities are as accurate as the laboratory values, whereas measured values for weak bands are generally more accurate than the ab initio values. The primary advantage of ab initio computations is therefore that the complete set of all transitions can be obtained. Exploratory studies have shown that completeness of the line data is crucial for the obtained stellar photospheric structure.

As an alternative to the ab initio computations of the line intensities, fits to experimental data have been attempted. The most promising method seems to be to fit the dipole function by use of a Padé approximant. Combined with a potential fitted to experimental energy levels, such a dipole function can in principle be used to predict the complete list of band intensities and line intensities for all bands with energies up to the molecular dissociation energy. The part of the dipole function which corresponds to the largest stretching (or bending) of the molecule is the most uncertain in such fits as well as in ab initio computations. This part is responsible for most of the many weak transitions, and large uncertainties are therefore to be excepted in the computed intensities of the weak spectral bands. As these are of major importance for the stellar photospheric structure (due to their huge number and their pseudo continuous appearance in the spectrum), a particularly large effort is desirable in comparing computed intensities with laboratory data for a representative sample of weak bands. Unfortunately, only few measurements of weak bands exist.

The interpretation of chromospheric and coronal spectra requires accurate ionization and recombination rates, collision strengths and transition probabilities. Recent projects to improve calculations of opacities in stellar interiors have led to a large amount of new atomic data. Some current and potential applications of atomic data to chromospheric and coronal spectra are mentioned below.

Strong chromospheric lines are optically thick, and the solution of the radiative transfer equations can depend on atomic data for other species contributing to the background opacity. Many lines in the spectra of stars with hot coronae are excited by electron collisions, but in the cooler non-coronal giants radiative processes involving the H Lyman α and β lines become more important (see Jordan 1988a). Photo-ionization rates from ground configuration excited terms and oscillator strengths to high levels are still needed.

Fe II is an important ion producing emission lines in stellar chromospheres. Several excitation mechanisms contribute to the observed spectra (Jordan 1988b). Permitted lines to the ground term and low lying metastable terms have high optical depths and transfer photons to spin forbidden lines sharing a common upper level (e.g. mults. uv 1 and uv 3 transfer photons to mults. uv 32 and 61). Line intensity ratios yield the optical depth in the optically thick lines. The strong H Ly α line in cool giants and supergiants excites high levels in Fe II, resulting in strong decays in multiplets such as uv 391 and 399. A large number of f-values are required to interpret the lines formed by these radiative processes. Nahar & Pradhan (1994) have published some results from the Opacity Project, calculated by using the close coupling method and observed energy levels (which introduce some allowance for relativistic effects). In most cases these f-values agree with experimental results and the calculations by Kurucz (1988) to within 10%. The latter are still needed for the interpretation of stellar uv spectra because of the treatment of spin-forbidden lines.

Similarly to many astrophysical studies, a spectroscopic analysis of chemically peculiar (CP) stars requires extensive, accurate sets of atomic data. Our purpose is to show here that the CP stars can also serve as a laboratory for checking the accuracy of the atomic data. Despite additional challenges toward modeling the atmospheres of the CP stars, they have a definite advantage as laboratories for atomic physics: their strong chemical anomalies make some spectral features especially prominent in their spectra, which can be better checked against theoretical predictions. This statement may be applied to both to stars exhibiting large over- or under- abundances. We discuss several examples how CP stars can be used along this idea.

We will focus here on the chemically peculiar stars of the upper main-sequence, which encompass the classical Am and Ap stars. Chemical anomalies are widespread on the main sequence for spectral types B. to F. These stars mostly show weak helium lines, and abnormally strong lines from iron-peak and heavier (e.g. the lanthanides) elements. A classical characteristics of Am stars in their weak Ca lines, while Ap stars may exhibit either strong Si or Hg lines. CP stars can be grouped according to the most obvious line strength anomalies, which are related to the effective temperature and to the presence or the absence of a magnetic field. In magnetic CP stars, the chemical elements are not uniformly distributed over the stellar surface, but they seem to be concentrated (or depleted) in rings or polar caps following the magnetic geometry. Magnetic CP stars have also broad absorption features in their ultraviolet and visible spectra that can used photometric peculiarity criteria. Using the new extensive photoionization data from the Opacity Project (OP), the UV absorption features can be identified and the UV spectrum can be well reproduced.

The opacity mechanism is the only well understood excitation mechanism of observed stellar oscillations. The driving effect arises due the a specific form of the opacity perturbation which leads to a conversion of the radiative flux energy into kinetic energy of oscillations. In 1963 Baker and Kippenhan demonstrated that the opacity mechanism acting in the Hell ionization zone is the cause of the Cepheid pulsations. Subsequently it has been shown that the same mechanism works in a large variety of stars. There are three opacity bumps that play a role in pulsation excitation in various types of objects - one connected with the H ionization, one connected with He II ionization zone - and one, discovered quite recently by Iglesias, Rogers & Wilson (1988), caused by a large agglomeration of metal element (mostly Fe) lines.

In this paper I review some recent advances in the use of large amounts of atomic data in the modelling of atmospheres and winds of hot stars. The review is highly selective but representative of current developments. A more general overview is to be found in Kudritzki and Hummer (1990) although the field is changing so rapidly that much has happened since then. The paper breaks down into three parts: work on line formation, in which the atmospheric structure is known and held fixed, is described first, then follows a description of the inclusion of line opacities in non-LTE in the atmosphere problem itself, and finally recent developments in the theory of radiatively driven stellar winds are summarized. Here special emphasis is given to a novel distance determination method based entirely on spectroscopie quantities. I close with a brief shopping list.

In a series of papers, Becker and Butler (1992,1994a, b,c) have investigated iron and nickel spectra in sub-dwarfs using the complete linearization method of Auer and Heasley (1976). The method scales linearly with the number of frequency points so they were able to use well over 10000 frequencies to adequately describe the line opacities. Several thousand lines were treated explicitly and the resultant computed spectra gave execellent fits to observed Hubble spectra in the wavelength ranges dominated by the ions concerned.

The different ionization stages gave consistent results for the iron and nickel abundances but only after line-blocking from millions of spectral lines in the far UV had been included. This was done using the Kurucz (1988) line lists coupled with line grouping as suggested by Anderson (1989) and described briefly in the next section.

The line-blanketed atmospheres of Kurucz (1991) are the best available up to about 30000K, where non-LTE effects start to become important. Non-LTE line-blanketed atmospheres have become feasible because the computational requirements of the accelerated lambda iteration (ALI) method (Werner and Husfeld, 1985) also scale linearly with the number of frequency points. On the other hand, Anderson (1989) suggested grouping energetically adjacent atomic levels together to form pseudo-levels on the basis that although they might, as a group, be in non-LTE, they should be in LTE with respect to one another due to the large number of collisions between them. This greatly reduces the number of levels to be considered but instead gives rise to highly complicated pseudo line-profiles. Grigsby et al (1992), who did not use ALI, constructed the first grid of line-blanketed non-LTE models by using a variation on the Opacity Distribution Function concept to group line opacities into blocks thereby reducing the number of frequency points required. Dreizler and Werner (1993) on the other hand were able to sample the opacity as they used ALI in their models.

White dwarfs are one of the most readily studied end products of stellarevolution. Their observed properties have provided and continue to provide important constraints for the theory of stellar evolution. Likewise, a study of magnetism in white dwarfs provides unique insights into the origin and evolution of magnetic fields in stars.

Spectacular progress has been made on the specific problem of the structure of the hydrogen atom in strong fields. Energy levels and transition probabilities are now known for all low lying states of hydrogen for the entire range of field strengths appropriate to white dwarfs and neutron stars (104-1013G) (Rosner et al 1984, Forster et al 1984 and Henry and O’Connell 1984). These calculations resulted in the identification of spectral features in the magnetic white dwarf Grw+70°8247 which had remained unidentified for over 50 years (Minkowski 1938), with Zeeman shifted hydrogen lines in a magnetic field of 100 -320 MG ((eg Wickamasinghe and Ferrano 1989). Several other strong field magnetic white dwarfs have since been discovered through hydrogen Zeeman spectroscopy. The data presently at hand show that most hydrogen rich magnetic white dwarfs have complex non-dipolar field structures with strong evidence for higher order multipole components.

For many years there has been a confrontation between stellar evolution and pulsation theories concerning the masses, luminosities, and compositions of the horizontal branch RR Lyrae variables. Masses obtained by Cox, Hodson & Clancy (CHC, 1983) were very low, but Kovacs (1985) and later Kovacs & Buchler (1988) suggested somewhat larger ones. Even later Simon & Cox (1991) verified CHC results, though still using the Los Alamos opacities. Petersen (1991, 1992) has also discussed this mass problem in some detail. The persistent discrepancy of 0.1 Mʘ or more between the evolution and pulsation masses was mostly ignored because neither theory could find any significant flaw in its analysis. Cox (1991), Kovacs, Buchler & Marom (1991), and Kovacs, Buchler, Marom, Iglesias & Rogers (1992) finally showed that larger double-mode pulsation masses, are consistent with evolution calculations to reproduce color-magnitude diagrams of globular clusters. Evolution tracks by many for years, especially the recent ones by Lee, Demarque & Zinn (1990), did require a much lower primordial helium abundance near the big bang value near Y = 0.23, and now this value, slightly enhanced by deep convection dredge-up in the earlier red giant stage, is also found to be appropriate for pulsation studies.

With the advent of new radiative opacities, the gross discrepancies in period ratio between observed stars and theoretical models have been eliminated in both the “beat” and “bump” Cepheid regimes (Moskalik, et al. 1992; Kanbur & Simon 1994). This paves the way for detailed modeling of the beat and bump stars.

We begin here by summarizing one such effort, the full description of which is given by Simon & Kanbur (1994). In this study, the slope of the evolutionary luminosity-mass relation is taken to be dlogL/dlogM = 4.0 (Stothers and Chin 1991) and the intercept determined by forcing models which follow this slope to also conform with the bump Cepheid resonance condition P2/P0 = 0.50 at P0 = 10d (Simon & Schmidt 1976; Buchler =et al. 1990). We then model separately each of the dozen known galactic beat Cepheids, subject to the just mentioned evolutionary constraint imposed by the 10-day resonance. We find masses and luminosities, ranging from M = 4Mʘ, log L = 3.0 at P0 = 3d to M = 6Mʘ, log L = 3.5 at P0 = 1Od. Furthermore, a range of metallicity, 0.01<Z<0.02, is required among the beat stars, whose period ratios, P1/P0,are predicted to decrease as the metallicity rises. This trend has been observed (Andrievsky et al. 1993). However, “standard” evolutionary tracks for Z = 0.02 [e.g., the Geneva calculations (Schaller, et al. 1992) or the Padua calculations (Bressan, et al. 1993)] cannot produce Cepheids with parameters as given above - first because the models are somewhat underluminous at given mass, and second because the calculated blue loops do not reach the instability strip for M = 7Mʘ. On the other hand, the models described by El Eid (1994) do penetrate the strip at masses as low as 4 or 5 Mʘ, but display a luminosity-to-mass ratio considerably too small to satisfy the resonance condition for bump Cepheids. Possible resolutions to these problems include a deep Fe convection zone whose effect would be to lower the period ratios (Cox 1993), and/or an opacity increase near 1 × 106K, which could extend the blue loops (Stothers & Chin 1994). Each of these schemes require more research.

Determination of masses has been a long standing problem in the Cepheid research. Since the early days of Cepheid modeling different methods of mass calibration have lead to conflicting results, implying serious discrepancies between the evolution and pulsation theories (see Cox 1980 for a review). In recent years this situtation has been mostly remedied, and the Baade-Wesselink masses, pulsation masses and evolutionary masses are now in good agreement with each other (e.g., Gieren 1989). However, both the bump masses inferred from the position of the secondary bump on the light curve and the beat masses obtained from the period ratios of the double mode Cepheids turned out to be very resilient to a reconciliation.

There are 13 Cepheids in the Galaxy in which two vibrational modes are simultaneously excited (e.g., Szabados 1988). The period ratios measured in these variables can be used in conjunction with the linear pulsation theory to infer the masses of these stars. The method was first applied by Petersen (1973) who obtained masses ranging from 1Mʘ to 3Mʘ for Cepheids with fundamental mode periods between 2.1 d and 6.3 d. Such ‘beat” masses are 2—4 times smaller than the evolutionary or Baade-Wesselink masses for these objects.

An accretion disk is formed when matter with angular momentum is flowing on a gravitating object (as e.g. a white dwarf, a neutron star, a young stellar object, or a black bole). It radiates because the transport of angular momentum (required for the matter to reach the central object) necessarily implies the conversion of potential energy into a form of energy that corresponds to higher entropy. Many aspects of the physics (as e.g. the mechanism for the heat generation) are not yet well understood but they are presently one of the centers of astronomical interest (see e.g. the books by Frank, King, and Raine, 1992, or by Wheeler, 1993).