Overview of Atomic and Molecular Processes in Critical Ionization Velocity

摘要

Alfven's critical ionization velocity (CIV) is a multistep process involving plasma physics and plasma chemistry. In the pre-onset stage, metastable states play an important role: They provide an energy pooling mechanism allowing low energy electrons to participate in the ionization processes; they may explain the low energy threshold as well as the fast time scale in the onset of CIV. For a sustaining CIV to occur, Townsend's criterion has to be satisfied. The kinetic energies of the neutrals are transformed to plasma wave energies via beam-plasma instabilities, and the plasma waves that heat the electrons result in a tail formation. Excitation of neutrals with subsequent radiation is an important energy loss mechanism. Finite beam size also limits the instability growth rate. In the propagation of CIV, ion-molecule reactions and molecular dissociative recombination are important. Ion-molecule reactions change the temporal chemical composition in a CIV process and help explain some results in CIV experiments. Molecular dissociative recombination reduces the plasma density, lowers the effective neutral mass, and loses energy via excitation and radiation; it tends to quench the propagation of CIV. Depending of various parameters, oscillatory behavior of CIV may occur. Reprints. (jhd)