Vibrationally Resolved Ion-Molecule Collisions

Typical for the divertor region is formation of the molecules, particularly vibrationally-rotationally excited H2 and H2+. Huge increase of the cross sections (as n4 for charge transfer) necessitates consideration of electronically excited atomic and molecular states. Vibrationally resolved collisions are crucial for volume plasma recombination schemes MAR and MAD with hydrogen and hydrocarbons, but also for infrared emission plasma diagnostic and for collisional-radiative (CR) models of H2/D2/T2 plasma. High rotational temperatures of hydrogen molecules are indicated in divertor plasma, leading to the need to include all vibrational (and possibly rotational) states of the hydrogen molecule and molecular ion. The needs for cross sections in divertor plasma modelling are further analyzed. Two main issues arise in the plasma modelling of the divertor plasma. These are (1) the sensitivity of the plasma modelling to the particular atomic and molecular processes and (2) need for self-consistent database of the blocs of processes (and the whole database matrix) in the integral CR modelling. Needless to say, high importance of the self-consistent processes derived at the 'same footing' arises also from the unitarity requirements of the mutually competing processes. Investing large effort to satisfy these requirements we have derived full unitary database of the reacting H+ + H2(v) and H + H2+(v) systems, leading to the set of cross sections resolved with respect to initial and final vibrational state for collisionally induced excitation, charge transfer, dissociation and association processes on the two lowest adiabatic electronic surfaces of the H3+ quasimolecular system. This unitary set of data was obtained by state-of-the-art fully quantum-mechanical technique, in the huge set of vibrational states (including dissociative continuum, which was here discretized in a large box)