Ion-impact-induced interatomic Coulombic decay in neon and argon dimers

Abstract

We investigate the contribution of interatomic Coulombic decay induced by ion impact in neon and argon dimers (Ne2 and Ar2) to the production of low-energy electrons. Our experiments cover a broad range of perturbation strengths and reaction channels. We use 11.37 MeV/u S14 +, 0.125 MeV/u He1+, 0.1625 MeV/u He1+, and 0.150 MeV/u He2+ as projectiles and study ionization, single and double electron transfer to the projectile, as well as projectile electron loss processes. The application of a COLTRIMS reaction microscope enables us to retrieve the three-dimensional momentum vectors of the ion pairs of the fragmenting dimer into Neq+-Ne1+ and Arq +-Ar1+ (q= 1, 2, 3) in coincidence with at least one emitted electron. © 2013 American Physical Society.