Air spirits occur high up in the Earth's atmosphere
High up in the Earth's atmosphere, so-called air spirits occur, which are a weather phenomenon consisting of a gigantic network of electric discharges with a lifetime of a many milliseconds giving rise to a varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. Using the Swedish National Infrastructure, DESIREE, located at Stockholm University, the study was led by Rich Thomas and PhD student Mathias Poline at the physics department of SU, and in a collaboration with the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
The two oppositely charged ion beams are injected and stored in their respective rings by the use of quadrupoles and deflectors. Between the two pick-up (PU) electrodes, they are merged together and interact freely. The neutrals formed in the MN reactions continue straight to the imaging detector (IMD). Resistive-anode encoder-based detectors are used for neutral beam monitoring (RAES, RAEA) and charged-fragment detection (FD).
High up in the Earth's atmosphere, so-called air spirits occur, which are a weather phenomenon consisting of a gigantic network of electric discharges with a lifetime of a many milliseconds giving rise to a varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. The products and dynamics in mutual neutralization (MN) of O2+ with O− which occurs in such sprites are unknown. Using the Swedish National Infrastructure, DESIREE, located at Stockholm University, a study led by Rich Thomas and PhD student Mathias Poline at the physics department of SU, and in a collaboration with the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, reveal that the reaction is described by a fully-dissociative two-step mechanism via intermediate O2 Rydberg states and, furthermore, the outcome of the interaction depends on the O2+ vibrational state.
Mutual Neutralization (MN) is studied at the DESIREE ion-beam storage ring. In MN, an electron is transferred from a negative to a positive ion forming two neutral particles. This fundamental process is important in many natural environment.
The Atomic Physics division is pursuing experimental research in atomic collision physics dealing with interactions of positively and negatively charged atomic ions, molecular ions such as fullerenes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), biomolecules, and clusters.
