Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
It is known that a direct analogy exists between the processes occurring in
space and in laboratory facilities. For example, laboratory studies of laser-hydrogen
plasma have shown that the features of the processes taking place in it are similar to
the processes occurring in the atmosphere of cooling-type stars of the “white dwarf”
class.
Recombination leading to filling of the Rydberg states, and being the main
mechanism of the ionization-recombination processes with participation of the
molecular ions, is sufficiently popular in the astrophysical literature. An example is
low-temperature layers enriched by helium of those white dwarfs' atmosphere and
the solar photosphere. At the same time, there remain many unresolved questions
relating to the processes of a gas and a dust in the atmosphere of the satellite
structures of the giant planet Jupiter: Io rich with sodium, where undoubtedly can
take place the ionization processes involving excited sodium atoms, similar to those
occurring in the laboratory photoresonance plasma in alkali metals vapors in Earth
conditions (Klyucharev et al.
2007
).
Recent results on the stochastic dynamics in the processes of chemical ionization
(Klyucharev et al.
2010
) in frames of the resonant collision model (Smirnov
and Mihajlov
1971a
) indicate the possibility of shifting the primary selective
excitation of the RA over a group of excited states, and thereby of control of the
elementary processes. The latter is of great interest, because it allows us to identify
the relationship between determinism and stochasticity in atomic physics. Below
we restrict ourselves to the effective principal quantum numbers
n
eff
25, which
provide the maximum effect of chemical ionization.
1.2
Collision of Atoms in the Thermal and Subthermal
Energy Ranges Leading to Ionization
Depending on the state of particle-collision partners in the entrance and exit
channels of reactions, the total set of ionization processes in collisions of atoms and
molecules can be divided into the processes of collision ionization and chemical
ionization. This is a conditional division, which is determined by the potential
energy of the excitation and kinetic energy of relative motion of colliding particles.
The range of kinetic energies of the atoms of interest to the physics of collision
processes lies in the interval 10
9
to 10
3
K, which extends from a “Bose-Einstein
condensate” to high-current arc plasma. Remember that the energy of 8.617
10
5
eV corresponds to the temperature of 1 K, which agrees approximately with the
temperature of liquid helium. Each interval of temperatures of the gas medium has
its own set of preferred processes leading to the ionization; in this case, following
the division of the collision energy
E
col
of relative motion: the thermal (10
1
to
1 eV), subthermal (10
3
to 10
1
eV), and cold (less than 10
3
eV), i.e., collisions
in the experiments on laser cooling of atoms.
In the literature, the chemical ionization process is called the reaction in which
the transition to a state of the ionization continuum is the result of the internal
