Collisions between He+ and O2

Two laboratory experiments were performed to study the products of collisions between He⁺ and O₂. In the first, mass spectrometry of afterglows in mixtures of helium and oxygen indicated that the product of the collisions at thermal energies was O⁺, with a rate coefficient of the order of 5 x 10⁻¹⁰ cm³ sec⁻¹. In the second, higher-energy crossedbeam techniques indicited again that the reaction yieided O⁺. In the energy range 0.1 to 2.0 kev, the energy dependence and magnitude of the reaction cross section were such as to suggest that the collision process is an accidentally resonant, dissociative charge transfer. (auth)