Low Energy Charge Transfer between C5+ and Atomic Hydrogen

Abstract

Charge transfer (CT) with carbon ions has been identified for a long time as important in both magnetic fusion plasma devices and more recently in solar wind interactions with comets, planets, or neutrals in the heliosphere. A merged-beams technique is used to measure the absolute total charge transfer cross section for C5+ and atomic H over four orders of magnitude in collision energy, from 12,000 eV/u to 0.64 eV/u. The present measurements are compared with previous measurements using an atomic hydrogen target and benchmark available classical trajectory Monte-Carlo and molecular-orbital close-coupling calculations. An increasing cross section below 10 eV/u is attributed to trajectory effects due to the ion-induced dipole attraction between reactants.