Goals for the application of high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy to the diagnosis of stellar coronal plasmas

Examples are provided of how high-resolution X-ray spectra may be used to determine the temperature and emission measure distributions, electron densities, steady and transient flow velocities, and location of active regions in stellar coronas. For each type of measurement, the minimum spectral resolution required to resolve the most useful spectral features is estimated. In general, high sensitivity is required to obtain sufficient signal-to-noise to exploit the high spectral resolution. Although difficult, each measurement should be achievable with the instrumentation proposed for AXAF.