Collisional heating in ionic argon clusters The Ar+Ar2+ case

Abstract

The efficiency of collisionally induced vibrational excitations of argon ionic dimer cores, seen as nucleation systems for ionic argon clusters in supersonic expansion processes, is examined by computing quantum mechanical excitation probabilities in collisional encounters with single argon atoms. The calculations find the presence of ‘core-excited’ Feshbach resonances at these energy regimes but also indicate that such effects are likely to play a marginal role in the formation of ‘hot’ nucleation cores, a result which bears some consequences on the microscopic modelling of the growth of ionic microclusters of argon.