Production and destruction of metastable negative ions. Progress report, September 1, 1985-August 31, 1986

Technical Report · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1986

OSTI ID:5797341

Pegg, D J

We have continued to investigate the structure of metastable negative ions using fast-beam autodetachment spectroscopy. The rather surprising discovery that the metastable negative ion dimer He/sub 2//sup -/ could be produced in our apparatus caused us to concentrate for most of the grant period on determining its structure. This work led us, in turn, to make further survey measurements to see if we could produce and study the structure of other exotic metastable molecular negative ions such as OH/sup -/, H/sub 2/O/sup -/, NH/sub 2//sup -/, and NeH/sup -/ which are difficult to produce by other means. We failed to detect any production of H/sub 2/O/sup -/ or HeH/sup -/ ions but we did detect small amounts of OH/sup -/ and NH/sub 2//sup -/ ions. Spectroscopic measurements on these low intensity beams did not produce any detectable discrete energy features. This result could mean that the ions are formed in stable states or, if they are metastable, the signal-to-noise ratio in our measurements was insufficient to exhibit structure in the spectra.

• Research Organization: Tennessee Univ., Knoxville (USA). Dept. of Physics
• DOE Contract Number: FG05-85ER13456
• OSTI ID: 5797341
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/13456-1; ON: DE86010284
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640302* -- Atomic
Molecular & Chemical Physics-- Atomic & Molecular Properties & Theory
640304 -- Atomic
Molecular & Chemical Physics-- Collision Phenomena
74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ANIONS
CHARGED PARTICLES
COLLISIONS
DATA
DIMERS
ELECTRON COLLISIONS
ELECTRON-ION COLLISIONS
ELEMENTS
ENERGY LEVELS
ENERGY SPECTRA
EXCITED STATES
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FLUIDS
GASES
HELIUM
INFORMATION
ION COLLISIONS
IONS
METASTABLE STATES
NONMETALS
NUMERICAL DATA
RARE GASES
SPECTRA