Soft X-ray emissions of Si IX in Procyon

Abstract A detailed analysis of emission lines of carbon-like silicon reveals that some ratios of n = 3 → 2 line intensities are sensitive to the electron density, ne. The ratio between two groups of 3d → 2p transition lines of 55.246 A and 55.346 A provides a good diagnostic of ne because of the combined characteristic of sensitivity to electron density and relative insensitivity to temperature. From this ratio, a lower limit of the electron density of 0.6 × 108 cm−3 was set for Procyon, which is consistent with the values constrained by C V and Si X emission lines. Significant discrepancies were found between theoretical predictions and observations for the 3s → 2p lines relative to 3d → 2p lines in Procyon, recently measured using the Chandra high-resolution transmission grating instrument. The difference of more than a factor of 3, cannot be explained by uncertainties of atomic data. Ness and co-workers also suggested that the effect of opacity appeared not to be a major factor for the discrepancy. For the 3s → 2p line at 61.611 A, present work indicates that the large discrepancy may be from the contamination of a S VIII line at 61.645 A. For lines at 61.702 and 61.846 A, we suggest that the discrepancies may be attributed to contaminations by currently yet-unknown spectral lines.