Study of Low Energy Charge Transfer Reactions of Metastable Ar Ions with Ar, Kr and Xe Atoms by Time-of-Flight Technique

Abstract

Energy distributions of metastable argon atoms Ar^M produced by charge transfer collisions of metastable argon ions Ar^+M with Ar, Kr and Xe were measured by a time-of-flight technique at 10 eV region. The Ar^M’s were found to be formed by only exothermic reactions. The analysis of the energy distributions revealed that in any case, certain excited states of atom Ar^* are produced by the collisions and Ar^M follows via the radiative decay from the Ar^* presumably of the 3p⁵3d state. A hypothesis of one-electron-process for the charge transfer is proposed.