Ionization Methods Originated from Penning Ionization

The theory of Penning ionization.

Rotationally induced Penning ionization of ultracold pho- toassociated helium dimers

– We have studied photoassociation of metastable 2S1 helium atoms near the 2 S1-2 P2asymptote by both ion detection in a magneto-optical trap and trap-loss measurements in a magnetic trap. A detailed comparison between the results of the two experiments gives insight into the mechanism of the Penning ionization process. We have identified four series of resonances corresponding to vibrational m...

Cold atomic collisions: coherent control of penning and associative ionization.

Coherent control techniques are computationally applied to cold (1 mK<T<1 K) and ultracold (T<1 muK) Ne*(3s,3P2)+Ar(1S0) collisions. We show that by using various initial superpositions of the Ne*(3s,3P2) M={-2,-1,0,1,2} Zeeman sublevels it is possible to reduce the Penning ionization and associative ionization cross sections by as much as 4 orders of magnitude. It is also possible to drastical...

PENNING IONIZATION OF SMALL MOLECULES BY METASTABLE NEON by

Photoassociation Spectroscopy in Penning Ionization Reactions at Sub-Kelvin Temperatures.

Penning ionization reactions in merged beams with precisely controlled collision energies have been shown to accurately probe quantum mechanical effects in reactive collisions. A complete microscopic understanding of the reaction is, however, faced with two major challenges-the highly excited character of the reaction's entrance channel and the limited precision of even the best state-of-the-ar...