Low-Energy Charge Transfer in Multiply-Charged Ion-Atom Collisions Studied with the Combined SCVB-MOCC Approach

A survey of theoretical studies of charge transfer involving collisions of multiply-charged ions with atomic neutrals (H and He) is presented. The calculations utilized the quantum-mechanical molecular-orbital close-coupling (MOCC) approach where the requisite potential curves and coupling matrix elements have been obtained with the spin-coupled valence bond (SCVB) method. Comparison is made among various collision partners, for equicharged systems, where it is illustrated that even for total charge transfer cross sections, scaling-laws do not exist for low-energy collisions (i.e. < 1 keV/amu). While various empirical scaling-laws are well known in the intermediateand high-energy regimes, the multi-electron configurations of the projectile ions results in a rich and varied low-energy dependence, requiring an explicit calculation for each collision-partner pair. Future charge transfer problems to be addressed with the combined SCVB-MOCC approach are briefly discussed.