Aerosol nucleation induced by a high energy particle beam

Abstract

We have studied sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation in an atmospheric pressure reaction chamber using a 580 MeV electron beam to ionize the volume of the reaction chamber. We find a clear contribution from ion‐induced nucleation and consider this to be the first unambiguous observation of the ion‐effect on aerosol nucleation using a particle beam under conditions that resemble the Earth's atmosphere. By comparison with ionization using a gamma source we further show that the nature of the ionizing particles is not important for the ion‐induced component of the nucleation. This implies that inexpensive ionization sources ‐ as opposed to expensive accelerator beams ‐ can be used for investigations of ion‐induced nucleation.