THE DYNAMICS OF NEH+ PRODUCTION IN NE-ASTERISK(P-3(2,0))-HCL COLLISIONAL AUTOIONIZATION

The ionization of HCl molecules by thermal energy collisions with metastable Ne* atoms has been studied experimentally and theoretically. The integral elastic cross sections have been measured and analyzed, together with the total ionization cross sections, to obtain an optical potential able to describe the collision dynamics of the neutral reactants. The relative cross sections for NeH+ and NeD+ production in Ne*-HCl or DCl have been measured as a function of the collision energy. A theoretical calculation of the potential energy for the reactive Ne + HCl+(A) --> NeH+ + Cl system has been performed by SCF, Cl, and CASSCF methods. The dynamics of NeH+ production is described by two theoretical models. The first one simply couples the semiclassical treatment of Penning ionization with the Langevin criterion for the postionization ion-molecule reaction. The second model also assumes the statistical phase space theory to describe the partitioning of the Ne...HCl+(A) ionic complex among the possible final products.