Dissociative electron attachment to the metastable c 3PIμ state of molecular hydrogen

The H2-2PIsub(u) resonance calculated by Buckley and Bottcher (J. Phys. B.; 10: L635 (1977)) is used in an estimation of the cross section for dissociative electron attachment (DA) to the metastable c3PIsub(u) state of molecular hydrogen. The cross section is found to be substantially larger than that for DA to the low vibrational levels of the ground electronic state X1Σ+sub(g). It appears that DA to C3PIsub(u) could play an important role in the production of the relatively high densities of negative ions in low-density hydrogenic plasma observed by Nicolopoulou et al (J. Physique, 38: 1399 (1977)). (author)