Electron Capture by Proton Beam in Collisions with Water Vapor

Abstract

In low energy ion-molecule collisions, electron capture is one of the most important channels. A new experimental setup was developed to study the electron capture process using low-energy ion beams extracted from an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma-based ion accelerator. Experiments were carried out with the proton beam colliding with water vapor in the energy range of 70–300 keV. Capture events were detected using a position-sensitive detection system comprising micro channel plates (MCPs) and a delay line detector (DLD). These e-capture events can be a result of pure capture reactions as well as transfer ionization. The capture cross section was found to decrease sharply with the beam energy and agreed well with previous measurements. The setup was also used to detect the events that gave rise to the single and multiple e-capture (integrated over all recoil-ion charge states) of C4+ ions. The capture cross-sections for one, two, three, and four electrons were measured for 100 keV C4+ ions. The ratio of multielectron capture yield to that for single e-capture decreased with the number of captured electrons.