Excitation by electron capture in collisions of ground state and metastable Ne2+with Xe at 40 keV

Abstract

The optical attenuation method (OAM) developed recently by Matsumoto et al. (1980) has been extended to photon emission in the VUV spectral region to investigate initial- to final-state selective electron capture in Ne2+-Xe collisions at 40 keV. One-electron-capture cross sections for Ne2+ ions in their 3P ground state were found to be only one half of that for the metastable 1D ions which is explained by a larger contribution from transfer ionisation for the latter. With these results initial- to final-state selective excitation cross sections for the most important electron capture channels were derived and found to be consistent with the corresponding total one-electron-capture cross section.