Reactive collisions between electrons and NO+ ions: rate coefficient computations and relevance for the air plasma kinetics

Abstract

Extensive calculations of the rate coefficients for dissociative recombination (DR), elastic collisions, inelastic collisions (ICs) and superelastic collisions of NO+ ions on initial vibrational levels, , with electrons of energy between 10−5 and 10 eV have been performed, with a method based on multichannel quantum defect theory. Comparisons of the DR rate coefficients with the plasma experimental results give a good agreement, confirming that the vibrationally excited NO+ ions recombine more slowly than those in the ground state. Also, our ground state IC rate coefficients are very similar to previously computed R-matrix data. The rate coefficients have been fitted to a modified Arrhenius law, and the corresponding parameters are given, in order to facilitate the use of the reaction data in kinetical plasma modelling.