  In photoionized gases with cosmic abundances, dielectronic recombination (DR)
proceeds primarily via nlj --> nl'j' core excitations (Dn=0 DR). We have
measured the resonance strengths and energies for Fe XVIII to Fe XVII and Fe
XIX to Fe XVIII Dn=0 DR. Using our measurements, we have calculated the Fe
XVIII and Fe XIX Dn=0 DR DR rate coefficients. Significant discrepancies exist
between our inferred rates and those of published calculations. These
calculations overestimate the DR rates by factors of ~2 or underestimate it by
factors of ~2 to orders of magnitude, but none are in good agreement with our
results. Almost all published DR rates for modeling cosmic plasmas are computed
using the same theoretical techniques as the above-mentioned calculations.
Hence, our measurements call into question all theoretical Dn=0 DR rates used
for ionization balance calculations of cosmic plasmas. At temperatures where
the Fe XVIII and Fe XIX fractional abundances are predicted to peak in
photoionized gases of cosmic abundances, the theoretical rates underestimate
the Fe XVIII DR rate by a factor of ~2 and overestimate the Fe XIX DR rate by a
factor of ~1.6. We have carried out new multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock and
multiconfiguration Breit-Pauli calculations which agree with our measured
resonance strengths and rate coefficients to within typically better than
<~30%. We provide a fit to our inferred rate coefficients for use in plasma
modeling. Using our DR measurements, we infer a factor of ~2 error in the Fe XX
through Fe XXIV Dn=0 DR rates. We investigate the effects of this estimated
error for the well-known thermal instability of photoionized gas. We find that
errors in these rates cannot remove the instability, but they do dramatically
affect the range in parameter space over which it forms.
