A B S T R A C T Title: Recombination of Ions in Plasma at 50 − 300 K Author: Peter Rubovič Supervisor: Prof. RNDr. Juraj Glosík, DrSc. Abstract: Main part of this doctoral thesis lies in a study of recom- bination of atomic and molecular ions in low temperature plasmatic environment with emphasis on effect of third bodies. Stationary After- glow equipped with Cavity Ring Down Spectrometer and Cryogenic Flowing Afterglow with Langmuir Probe II were used to obtain recom- bination rate coefficients. Electron assisted collisional radiative recom- bination of Ar+ ion was studied in the temperature range of 50−100 K and helium assisted collisional radiative recombination was observed too. Both H+ 3 and its isotopologue D+ 3 were studies in flowing after- glow and spectroscopically in stationary afterglow as well. Binary re- combination rate coefficients and ternary recombination rate coeffi- cients for helium assisted ternary recombination were determined in the temperature range of 50 − 250 K. These coefficients were deter- mined also for pure ortho- and para- nuclear spin configurations of H+ 3 in the temperature range of 80 − 200 K. Keywords: dissociative recombination, collisional radiative recombi- nation, H+ 3 , D+ 3 , Ar+ viii

La recombinaison dissociative (RD) est le processus dans lequel un ion moléculaire positif se recombine avec un électron et se dissocie après en fragments neutres. Parmi les différents types de réactions entre ions moléculaires et électrons, la RD mérite une attention particulière à cause du rôle important qu'elle joue dans les plasmas à basse température et de faible densité, telles que celles rencontrées dans les ionosphères planétaires et les nuages interstellaires. En dépit de l'apparente simplicité de la RD, son étude s'est avéré difficile aussi bien du point de vue expérimental que théorique. Afin d'apporter plus de lumière sur ce processus, la technique de la post-décharge en écoulement a été introduite et a été largement utilisée ces dernières décennies. La présente thèse est dédiée aux études expérimentales de la réaction RD, à l'aide du spectromètre de masse à sonde Langmuir (FALP-MS) en post-décharge en écoulement, à l'Université de Rennes 1, à Rennes, en France. Nous avons étudié la réaction RD à température ambiante a été étudiée pour les ions moléculaires d'acétone ( ) et les cations de diméthylamine cations ( ainsi que les vitesses de réaction des cations de triméthylamine ( cations, et nous avons obtenu des valeurs avec des incertitudes de of ± 30 %. De plus, nous avons étudié l'attachement électronique à la diméthylamine neutre et nous avons trouvé une constante de vitesse de = 4.81 x 10-10 cm3 s-1. Un nouveau système d'injection pour l'anneau de stockage électrostatique de KACST a été conçu et construit dans le laboratoire de l'IPR à Rennes. Le couplage de la source d'ions avec un analyseur de masse quadripolaire et l'utilisation d'un système de vannes pulsées assurant un pompage différentiel entre différentes régions de la ligne d'injection constitue une méthode nouvelle dans le contexte d'un anneau de stockage. Le but final de ce projet est l'étude des réactions à ions lourds tels que les ions moléculaires biologiques. / Dissociative recombination (DR) is a process in which a positive molecular ion recombines with an electron and subsequently dissociates into neutral fragments. Among the different types of molecular ion-electron reactions DR deserves particular attention due to the important role it plays in low-temperature and low-density plasmas such as those encountered in planetary ionospheres and interstellar clouds. Despite the apparent simplicity of the DR reaction, its investigation has proven to be a difficult task from both experimental and theoretical perspectives. In order to shed more light upon this process the flowing afterglow technique has been introduced and utilised extensively for the last few decades. This thesis is devoted to experimental studies into the DR reaction using the flowing afterglow Langmuir probe mass spectrometer FALP-MS at the University of Rennes 1, in Rennes, France. The DR reaction at room temperature has been investigated for the acetone molecular ions ( ) and dimethylamine cations ( as well as the reaction rates of trimethylamine ( cations, and the obtained values were with uncertainties of ± 30 %. In addition, the electronic attachment to neutral dimethylamine was also studied and the rate constant was determined to be = 4.81 x 10-10 cm3 s-1. A new ion injection system system for the KACST electrostatic storage ring has been designed and built in the IPR laboratory in Rennes. The coupling of an ion source with a quadrupole mass analyzer and the use of a gas pulsing system to maintain the differential pumping between different regions of the injection line, is a novel technique for use with a storage ring. The final goal of this system is to study the reactivity of heavy ions such as biological molecular ions.

Interstellar plasma — interstellar clouds in particular — play an important role in determining the structure and evolution of galaxies. Understanding the time evolution of such plasmas requires knowledge of the chemical processes that drive their dynamics. Two processes are studied in this dissertation: radiative electron attachment (REA) via dipole-bound states (DBSs) and dissociative recombination (DR). Of the several hundred molecules detected in the interstellar medium, only eight anions have been detected: CN-, C3N-, C5N-, C7N-, C4H-, C6H-, C8H-, and C10H-. Their production mechanism is not well known; REA was suggested as a possible formation pathway, but previous theoretical studies have found that REA rate coefficients were too low to explain the formation of CN-, C3N-, and C5N-. It was later suggested that including DBSs — an electron weakly bound at a large distance to the large dipole moment of a neutral molecule — could appreciably enhance the REA rate coefficients. The first portion of this study is dedicated to investigating the role of the large dipole moment of rotating C3N using an accurate \it ab initio approach with electronic and rotational resolution. DBS wavefunctions of C3N- are calculated and used to obtain REA cross sections that produce even smaller rate coefficients, suggesting that C3N- is efficiently formed by a different process. The second part of this study investigates DR in the difficult case of molecules with low-lying eletronic resonances, although these are not necessary for the approach. An approach to treat both direct and indirect mechanisms of DR in a diatomic ion with electronic, vibrational, and rotational resolution using R-matrix scattering calculations, frame transformation theory, and multichannel quantum defect theory is presented and applied to the CH+ and CF+ molecular ions at low collision energies. The calculated CH+ cross sections agree well with recent rotationally state-resolved experimental results and overall better than previous theoretical results. The calculated CF+ cross sections agree well with experimental results, although these do not have rotational resolution, and overall better than previous theoretical results at low energies. Additionally, the method can study rovibronic (de-)excitation — a process in competition with DR. These are calculated and compared to previous theoretical calculations for CH+, which which our results agree well with the exception of dipole-driven rotational excitation cross sections. This discrepancy is tentatively attibuted to negelcting the contribution of higher partial waves in the description of the incident electron, which will be incorporated in future studies.

<p>In this thesis I have theoretically studied electron recombination processes with small molecular ions.</p><p>In these kind of processes resonant states are involved. To calculate the potential energy for these states as a function of internuclear distance, structure calculations and scattering calculations have to be performed.</p><p>So far I have been studying the ion-pair formation with in electron recombination with H₃⁺. The cross section for this process has been calculated using different kind of models, both a time dependent quantum mechanical and a semiclassical.</p><p>I have also studied the direct process of dissociative recombination of HF⁺. To calculate the total cross section for this process, we have performed wave packet propagation on thirty resonant states and summed up the individual cross sections for these states.</p><p>The cross sections for both these processes have a similar appearance to those measured experimentally in the ion storage ring CRYRING in Stockholm.</p>

Electron-ion recombination and ion-neutral interactions play a piv- otal role in the chemical evolution of molecules in the Interstellar Medium (ISM). Physical conditions under which these processes un- dergo in the ISM include a wide range of temperatures and particle number densities. This work contributes to the experimental study of named low temperature phenomena in the range of 30 K to 300 K focusing on the reactions of hydrogen-containing light molecules. The employed experimental techniques are based on a combination of a Stationary Afterglow (SA) instrument with a Continuous Wave Cavity Ring-down Spectrometer (cw-CRDS). The main contributions of this work can be split into three topics. (1) The proton and deuteron con- taining isotopic system of H3 + ions. The isotopic fractionation process in collisions with hydrogen and deuterium gas was investigated in low temperature discharges, nominal ion temperatures of 80 K to 140 K, to deduce relative ion densities in the experiments. These are necessary for afterglow studies of isotopic effects in electron-ion recombination of the studied ions. (2) Vibrational spectroscopy of N2H+ ions focusing on first overtone (2ν1 band) transitions and ion thermometry, the first step towards studies of electron-ion recombination. (3) The role of para/ortho spin...

In this thesis I have theoretically studied electron recombination processes with small molecular ions. In these kind of processes resonant states are involved. To calculate the potential energy for these states as a function of internuclear distance, structure calculations and scattering calculations have to be performed. So far I have been studying the ion-pair formation with in electron recombination with H3+. The cross section for this process has been calculated using different kind of models, both a time dependent quantum mechanical and a semiclassical. I have also studied the direct process of dissociative recombination of HF+. To calculate the total cross section for this process, we have performed wave packet propagation on thirty resonant states and summed up the individual cross sections for these states. The cross sections for both these processes have a similar appearance to those measured experimentally in the ion storage ring CRYRING in Stockholm. / QC 20101103

In this thesis I have performed theoretical studies on the reaction dynamics in few-atom molecules. In particular, I have looked at reaction processes in which highly excited resonant states are involved. When highly excited states are formed, the dynamics becomes complicated and approximations normally used in chemical reaction studies are no longer applicable.To calculate the potential energy curve for some of these states as a function of internuclear distance, a combination of structure calculations and scattering calculations have to be performed, and the reaction dynamics on the potentials has been studied using both time-independent and time-dependent methods.The processes that have been studied and which are discussed in this thesis are ion-pair formation in electron recombination with H3+, dissociative recombination and ion-pair formation of HF+, mutual neutralization in H++F- collisions and dissociative recombination of BeH+. Isotope effects in these reactions have also been investigated. Our calculated cross sections are compared with experimentally measured cross sections for these reactions.

We studied how distribution of nuclear-spin states of H+ 3 ions or H2 molecules influence rate coefficients of H+ 3 -electron recombination or reactions of H2 with N+ or H+ , with regard to kinetic and internal temperatures of the reactants. Experiments were carried out in plasma environment or in an ensemble of ions in an ion trap. Main diagnostic methods were the Langmuir probe diagnos- tics, laser absorption- and mass spectroscopy. The distribution of nuclear spin states (para and ortho) was varied using a specially constructed para-hydrogen generator. We performed pioneer measurements of the rate coefficients for the nuclear-spin-state-selective binary and ternary H+ 3 -electron recombination in thermalised plasma. We performed studies of N+ + para/ortho-H2 reaction with high accuracy and interpreted the results as dependent on fine structure states of N+ ions. We measured a temperature dependence of the rate coeffi- cients for radiative and ternary channels of H+ + para/ortho-H2 association. 1

A two-dimensional model of the resonant electron-molecule collision processes with one nuclear and one electronic degree of freedom introduced by Houfek, Rescigno and McCurdy [Phys. Rev. A 73, 032721 (2006)] and a similar two- dimensional model of the dissociative recombination with potential proposed by Hamilton [Ph.D. thesis, University of Colorado, (2003)] are formulated within the time-dependent framework and solved numerically using the finite-element method with the discrete variable representation basis, the exterior complex scaling method and the generalized Crank-Nicolson method. On the model of electron-molecule collisions we illustrate how the time-dependent calculations can provide a deep insight into the origin of oscillatory structures in the vibrational excitation cross sections if one evaluates the cross sections not only at sufficiently large time to obtain the final cross sections, but rather at several characteristic times which are given by the evolution of the system. With use of the time- dependent calculations we demonstrate the complex nature of the dissociative recombination model dynamics and we propose the interpretation of the recom- bination process mechanism. We also propose few techniques for the explanation of the sharp structures in the dissociative recombination cross sections...

The purpose of this work and the project under which it was created is to develop, compare and validate several theoretical approaches and computation methods used to calculate the cross sections of dissociative recombination. For the most part it is con- cerned with the indirect dissociative recombination of molecular ions of H+ 2 in the singlet ungerade channels computed with three distinct approaches. First, the fully numerically solvable two-dimensional approach developed at ÚTF MFF UK as a part of my master's thesis. Second, a vibrational frame transformation method based on the work of Chang and Fano [E. S. Chang and U. Fano, Phys. Rev. A 6, 173 (1972)] and then enhanced into a full energy-dependent form by Gao and Greene [H. Gao and C. H. Greene, J. Chem. Phys. 91, 3988 (1989)], [H. Gao and C. H. Greene, Phys. Rev. A 42, 6946 (1990)], fur- ther improved by our own revisions. Third, a two-dimensional R-matrix method based on matching exact 2D solutions from a small interaction region to asymptotic solutions in the non-interacting region. We thoroughly discuss the various advantages and caveats of these methods and, in the later chapters, present our work on employing them for the realistic recombination of HeH+ + e− . Furthermore, we attempt to extend the presented models to the description of the...