State-Diagnosed Ion-Neutral Collisions leading to Charge Transfer

Abstract

A significant reservoir of potential energy in hot astrophysical plasmas exists in multiply charged positive ions. Inelastic collisional processes involving such ions govern the ionization and energy balance in such plasmas. Although inelastic processes such as, charge transfer, have been widely investigated, there remains a paucity of knowledge about charge changing processes where both reactions and products are state-diagnosed. We have applied high-resolution translational energy gain/loss spectroscopy to investigate state-diagnosed collisions between Kr2+ and H2 leading to single electron capture into specific electronic states of Kr+ at collision energies in the range 1–6 keV.