Laboratory Study of the Cameron Bands, the First Negative Bands, and Fourth Positive Bands in the Middle Ultraviolet 180–280 nm by Electron Impact Upon CO

Abstract

AbstractWe have analyzed medium‐resolution (full width at half maximum, FWHM = 1.2 nm), Middle UltraViolet (MUV; 180–280 nm) laboratory emission spectra of carbon monoxide (CO) excited by electron impact at 15, 20, 40, 50, and 100 eV under single‐scattering conditions at 300 K. The MUV emission spectra at 100 eV contain the Cameron Bands (CB) CO(a 3Π → X 1Σ+), the fourth positive group (4PG) CO(A 1Π → X 1Σ+), and the first negative group (1NG) CO+(B 2Σ+ → X 2Σ) from direct excitation and cascading‐induced emission of an optically thin CO gas. We have determined vibrational intensities and emission cross sections for these systems, important for modeling UV observations of the atmospheres of Mars and Venus. We have also measured the CB “glow” profile about the electron beam of the long‐lived CO (a 3Π) state and determined its average metastable lifetime of 3 ± 1 ms. Optically allowed cascading from a host of triplet states has been found to be the dominant excitation process contributing to the CB emission cross section at 15 eV, most strongly by the d 3Δ and a' 3Σ+ electronic states. We normalized the CB emission cross section at 15 eV electron impact energy by multilinear regression (MLR) analysis to the blended 15 eV MUV spectrum over the spectral range of 180–280 nm, based on the 4PG emission cross section at 15 eV that we have previously measured (Ajello et al., 2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018ja026308). We find the CB total emission cross section at 15 eV to be 7.7 × 10−17 cm2.