Electron-Induced Excitation, Recombination, and Dissociation of Molecular Ions Initiating the Formation of Complex Organic Molecules

Abstract

We review the study of dissociative recombination and rovibrational excitation of diatomic and small polyatomic molecular ions initiating complex organic molecules formation. In particular, we show how multichannel quantum defect theory (MQDT) and R-matrix methods are used to compute cross-sections and rate coefficients for cations in well-defined rovibrational levels of the ground electronic state, from sub-meV up to a few eV collision energies. The most recent MQDT results are compared either with other theoretical data or with measured data obtained in storage-ring experiments.

Study of electron scattering from $${{\mathrm {CH}}}_{{4}}^{+}$$, $${{\mathrm {NH}}}_{{3}}^{+}$$, $${\mathrm {H}}_{{2}}{\mathrm {O}}^{+}$$, $${{\mathrm {NH}}}_{{4}}^{+}$$ and $${\mathrm {H}}_{{3}}{\mathrm {O}}^{+}$$ molecular ions with an analytic static potential approach

“…We also obtained simultaneously the coefficients a ik and c kj and exponents α kj as in Eqs. (17), (18) and (19) and their corresponding values are given in Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Further, using the B3LYP/CC-PVTZ basis set, we obtained the dipole polarizability values for CH + 4 , NH + 3 , H 2 O + , NH + 4 and H 3 O + which are given in Table 9.…”

“…In such scattering, there may be elastic scattering; rotational, vibrational and electronic excitations, ionization, dissociation, electron capture processes, etc. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. All these are important to understand the role of molecular ions in the study of plasma, astrophysical, atmospheric and interstellar space environments.…”

“…In this respect, various groups have been studying the electron impact inelastic processes viz. ionization, dissociation, recombination, rotational and vibrational excitation in the low incident electron energies [10,17,28,29]. There is not much attention paid on the elastic scattering of electrons from molecular ions.…”

Population of ground and lowest excited states of sulfur via the dissociative recombination of SH+ in the diffuse interstellar medium

“…A detailed description of our theoretical approach was given in [31,38], its main steps are the following:…”

“…The MQDT approach has been proven to be a powerful method for the evaluation of the cross sections of the DR [12][13][14] and competitive processes like ro-vibrational and dissociative excitations. It was applied with great success to several diatomic systems like H + 2 and its isotopologues [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], O + 2 [23,24], NO + [25-29], CO + [30], N + 2 [31,32], BF + [33], triatomics like H + 3 [34][35][36], BF + 2 [37] and complex organic molecules [38].…”