Ion-atom-atom three-body recombination: from the cold to the thermal regime

Abstract

We present a study on ion-atom-atom reaction A+A+B${}^{+}$ in a wide range of systems and collision energies ranging from 100$\mu$K to 10${}^5$K, analyzing the two possible products: molecules and molecular ions. The dynamics is performed via a direct three-body formalism based on a classical trajectory method in hyperspherical coordinates developed in [J. Chem. Phys. $\text{140}$, 044307 (2014)]. Our chief finding is that the dissociation energy of the molecular ion product acts as a threshold energy separating the low and high energy regimes. In the low energy regime, the long-range tail of the three-body potential dictates the fate of the reaction and the main reaction product. On the contrary, in the high energy regime, the short-range of atom-atom and atom-ion interaction potential dominates the dynamics, enhancing molecular formation for the low energy regime.

11 pages, 9 figures, and 1 table. Submitted to The Journal of Chemical Physics

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Three-body recombination in physical chemistry