Uncorrelated transfer excitation collisions at high energies.

Abstract

A new mode of transfer excitation (TE) process in high-energy ion-atom collisions is analyzed in which two or more electrons in the target system are involved incoherently in the excitation of the projectile ion and electron transfer. This uncorrelated TE mode (UTE) is shown to resolve the long-standing discrepancy in the high-energy tail of the resonant TE (RTE) cross section in the ${\mathrm{Nb}}^{31+}$+${\mathrm{H}}_{2}$ collisions, and explains satisfactorily the recent experimental studies of the system ${\mathrm{F}}^{6+}$+${\mathrm{H}}_{2}$ by Schulz et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 62, 1738 (1989)] for the uncorrelated transfer excitation followed by x-ray decay plus RTEX, involving radiative decay to a singly excited state, and of the low-lying states of ${\mathrm{F}}^{6+}$ with He by Zouros et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 62, 2261 (1989)] for the UTE involving Auger decay.