The thermal motion of pertubing ions in a plasma causes a deviation of the broadened atomic spectral line shape from its 'static' shape as predicted by the well-known statistical theory of HOLTSMARK. Calculations of this effect in the adiabatic approximation, taking account of the simul- taneous action of all (mutually non- correlated) plasma ions on the radiating atom, have been carried out by
... [Show full abstract] the author and (apparently independently) by WIMMEL, the results of the two calculations being quite different(e.g. in the line wing they differ by three orders of magnitude). In the present paper the cause of this discrepancy is analysed, and the results of WIMMEL are shown to be erroneous. In parti- cular, they disagree in the limit of the line wing with the "binary"result of HOLSTEIN and also restrict excessively the applicability of the HOLTSMARK theory. The discrepancy is shown to be due to an error made by WIMMEL, which amounts to the tacit neglect of the field dependence of certain expansion coefficients. Taking into account the above dependence, leads exactly to the earlier results of the author which pre- dict "therma" corrections to the HOLTSMARK theory of a much more moderate magnitude.
