Electron capture and fragmentation in Ar11+ + CO collisions

Collisions between 3, 10, and 50 keV/q Ar11+ ions and CO molecules have been studied using the Macdonald Lab CRYEBIS. Coincidence time of flight was used to detect all recoil ions and a position sensitive detector was used to determine final projectile charge states. Single- and double-electron capture are much larger than ionization at these collision energies. The dominant recoil channel associated with the Ar10+ final state is the CO+ molecular ion. The main ion-pair channel is the C+ + O+ dissociation of CO2+ while higher charge states of the transient COq+ fall off rapidly. Charge states up to CO4+ are formed in the collision indicating that many electrons are captured, but only one (and sometimes two) is retained by the projectile. This is due to autoionization of the highly excited states occupied by the captured electrons. In general, the fragmentation pattern of the CO molecule resembles the fragmentation associated with ionization caused by fast highly charged ions. This is as expected, since both processes happen at large impact parameters