Charge-exchange collisions of multiply charged ions with atoms

Abstract

The problem of electron transfer between neutral atoms and multiply charged ions is considered at low and medium energies. It is assumed that a large number of final states are available for the electron transition so that the electron-capture process is treated as a tunnel effect caused by the strong attractive Coulomb field of the multicharged ion. The electron transition probability is obtained in a closed form using the modified-comparison-equation method to solve the Schr\"odinger equation. An approximately linear dependence of the one-electron transfer cross section on the charge of multicharged ions is found. Cross-section calculations of a number of charge-exchange reactions are performed.