Dissociative recombination of N2H+ ions with electrons in the temperature range of 80-350 K

Abstract

Recombination of N2H+ ions with electrons was studied using a stationary afterglow with a cavity ring-down spectrometer. We probed in situ the time evolutions of number densities of different rotational and vibrational states of recombining N2H+ ions and determined the thermal recombination rate coefficients for N2H+ in the temperature range of 80-350 K. The newly calculated vibrational transition moments of N2H+ are used to explain the different values of recombination rate coefficients obtained in some of the previous studies. No statistically significant dependence of the measured recombination rate coefficient on the buffer gas number density was observed.