corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. A » Volume 70 » Issue 5
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. A 70, 052716 (2004) [12 pages]

Dissociative recombination of rotationally cold H3+

Download: PDF (183 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

B. J. McCall*, A. J. Huneycutt†, and R. J. Saykally
Department of Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

N. Djuric‡ and G. H. Dunn
JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA

J. Semaniak and O. Novotny§
Institute of Physics, Swietokrzyska Academy, 25 406 Kielce, Poland

A. Al-Khalili, A. Ehlerding, F. Hellberg, S. Kalhori, A. Neau, and R. D. Thomas
Department of Physics, AlbaNova, Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

A. Paal and F. Österdahl
Manne Siegbahn Laboratory, Stockholm University, S-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden

M. Larsson
Department of Physics, AlbaNova, Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

Received 3 March 2004; published 30 November 2004

This paper presents the first dissociative recombination (DR) measurement of electrons with rotationally and vibrationally cold H3+ ions. A dc discharge pinhole supersonic jet source was developed and characterized using infrared cavity ringdown spectroscopy before installation on the CRYRING ion storage ring for the DR measurements. Rotational state distributions (Trot∼30 K) produced using the source were comparable to those in the diffuse interstellar medium. Our measurement of the electron energy dependence of the DR cross section showed resonances not clearly seen in experiments using rotationally hot ions, and allowed calculation of the thermal DR rate coefficient for ions at interstellar temperatures, αDR(23 K)=2.6×10−7 cm3 s−1. This value is in general agreement with recent theoretical predictions by Kokoouline and Greene Phys. Rev. A 68 012703 (2003)]. The branching fractions of the two breakup channels, H+H+H and H+H2, have also been measured for rotationally and vibrationally cold H3+.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.70.052716
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.70.052716
PACS:
34.80.Lx, 34.80.Gs, 39.10.+j, 33.20.Ea

*Present address: Department of Chemistry, School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 600 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

†Present address: Aerospace Corporation, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957.

‡Present address: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, USA.

§Also at Department of Electronics and Vacuum Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University Prague V Holesovickach, Prague 8, Czech Republic.

 
< Previous Article | Next Article >