Charge transfer between O⁺ ions and helium

The charge-transfer processes O⁺(⁴S⁰,²D⁰,²P⁰)+He→O(³P)+He⁺ have been investigated by using a fully quantal molecular-orbital close-coupling (QMOCC) approach. Cross sections are presented for ion energies from 0.5 to 10 keV and compared with those from recent experiments and semiclassical theory. Good agreement is found between the QMOCC results and the measurements. Particular attention is given to addressing the metastable component of the experimental ion beams. We further argue that the so-called “suppressed electron-capture effect” for metastable ions proposed by Wolfrum et al. is not a viable mechanism to explain their measurements. However, the current QMOCC calculations were found to reproduce neither the ground-state nor metastable-state cross sections predicted by the semiclassical method.