Intermediate coupling collision strengths for inner-shell excitation of highly charged Li-like ions

Results are obtained for intermediate coupling scale collision strengths Z2Ωsub(IC) for inner-shell excitation from the 1s22s 2Ssub(1/2) ground level to all fine-structure levels of the 1s2s2, 1s2s2p and 1s2p2 configurations in highly charged Li-like ions. The approach used is a Coulomb-Born-exchange method that can be regarded as a perturbation theory approach in which the zeroth-order functions are composed of hydrogenic orbitals. It is shown that even with inclusion of intermediate coupling, configuration mixing and parentage mixing effects, the results can be expressed in the simple form Z2Ωsub(IC) = aZ2Ωsub(H) + asup(e)Z2Ωsub(H)sup(e). The coefficients a and asup(e) are functions of the mixing coefficients and have been evaluated for 10 <- Z <- 74. The Z2Ωsub(H) and Z2Ωsub(H)sup(e) are scaled hydrogenic-ion collision strengths, which have been tabulated for a wide range of impact electron energies in earlier work. Illustrative numerical results for Z2Ωsub(IC) are given for Li-like argon, iron and molybdenum ions. (author)