Open AccessRate coefficients for electron‐impact rotational excitation of H + 3 and H 3 O +
Author(s) -
Faure Alexandre,
Tennyson Jonathan
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06306.x
Subject(s) - physics , excitation , atomic physics , electron ionization , electron , ion , r matrix , coulomb , electron excitation , range (aeronautics) , population , ionization , quantum mechanics , materials science , demography , sociology , composite material
Molecular R ‐matrix calculations are performed to obtain rotational excitation rate coefficients for electron collisions with the symmetric‐top ions H + 3 and H 3 O + up to electron temperatures of 10 000 K. De‐excitation rates and critical electron densities are also given. It is shown that short‐range interactions, which are ignored in the standard Coulomb–Born theory, are crucial for studying electron‐impact rotational excitation of molecular ions. In particular, our calculations show that electron collisions could help to create and maintain the predicted population inversion between the ( J , K ) = (4, 4) and (3, 1) levels of H + 3 and populate the rotational levels of H 3 O + up to the (4, 1) level.