Experimental study of single-electron capture by low-energy Neq+ recoil ions (q=3-6) from He, Ne and Ar using translational energy spectroscopy

Abstract

The translational energy spectroscopy technique has been used to study single-electron capture processes for collisions of slow Neq+ ions (q=3-6, where q is the projectile charge state), produced in a recoil ion source, with He, Ne and Ar at laboratory impact energies between 100 and 600 eV and scattering angles between 0 degrees and 6 degrees . The measurements show that the dominant reaction channels are due to capture into excited states of the projectile products and show a dependence on scattering angle. There is clear evidence of the presence of the first and second metastable states in the incident Ne3+ ion beam. A reasonable description of the dominant final states is obtained in terms of the reaction windows, which are calculated using the single-crossing Landau-Zener model. The measured differential cross sections show that the projectile products are distributed with maximum intensity near a scattering angle theta c which corresponds to capture at an impact parameter equal to the crossing radius.