Effectiveness of the product stabilization in direct three-body recombination

TL;DR

This study investigates how different third bodies (Hg, Xe, Kr) influence the stabilization of products in a three-body recombination process involving cesium and bromide ions, using a deformed polyhedron method to determine optimal conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to evaluate the effectiveness of various atoms as third bodies in stabilizing recombination products, highlighting the role of interaction potentials and collision dynamics.

Findings

Xe and Hg are highly effective in energy removal due to strong repulsion.

Kr is less effective because of softer repulsion potentials.

Collision dynamics significantly influence energy transfer efficiency.

Abstract

The optimal kinematic parameters for the formation of the most stabilized products in direct three-body recombination Cs+ + Br- + R ---> CsBr + R with R = Hg, Xe, Kr are determined by the deformed polyhedron method for the third body energy and the ion encounter energy ranging from 1 to 10 eV. The stabilization effectivity functions are obtained for each atom, and the mean effectivities of the atoms in the formation of products with the lowest internal energy are calculated. The Xe and Hg atoms are almost equally effective in energy removal from the recombining pair due to high hardness of the repulsion potentials in the interactions of these atoms with the ions. The Kr atom effectivity is much less because of much softer repulsion in the corresponding pairwise interactions. The dynamical mechanism of the third body collisions with the ions affects greatly the energy transfer effectiveness.