Collisions of Cs-with atoms and molecules

Abstract

Presents the results for measurements of the absolute total cross sections for electron detachment sigmae(E) and charge transfer sigmai(E) in low-energy collisions of Cs-with He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, D2, N2, O2, CO, CO2, SO2, N2O, CH4and SF6. In the case of the rare gases, the apparent energetic threshold for detachment is rather high (near E=50 eV); a similar observation has also been made for the Na-and K-projectiles. As before, a curve-crossing model well describes the observed sigmae(E). Structure in sigmae(E) for the CO2target has been attributed to charge transfer to a metastable state of CO2-(2A1). Similarly, in the case of N2O, both sigmae(E) and sigmai(E) exhibit behaviour which suggests that charge transfer to a temporary negative-ion state of that molecule is involved in the collisional dynamics. Charge transfer is also observed to be an important exit channel for other molecules; for example, the value of sigmai(E=30 eV) is about 500 a02for the SF6target.