Luminescence of Diatomic Molecules II. Energy Dependence of Collisional Deactivation Cross Sections
Abstract Photoionization has been used to produce ions of N2, O2. and CO in definite excited states. Deactivating collisions of these ions with molecular gases were described in paper I, where the cross sections of ions with thermal velocity are given for various electronic and vibrational states. By application of an electric field the charged particles are accelerated yielding information on the influence of the kinetic energy of the collision partners on these deactivating collisions. The cross section is found to follow an exponential law σ ~ E-α, with a varying between 0.34 and 0 41 for the different excited stales of the molecular ions. The observations were carried out for a range of kinetic energies from the thermal energy up to 6 eV maximum. This simple exponential law is followed for kinetic energies up to at least 2 eV. At higher energies slight deviations were found to occur