A guided-ion beam study of the reactions of Xe(+) and Xe(2+) with NH(3) at hyperthermal collision energies.

We have measured the absolute cross sections for reactions of Xe(+) and Xe(2+) with NH(3) at collision energies in the range from near-thermal to ∼34 and ∼69 eV, respectively. For Xe(+), the cross section for charge transfer, the only exothermic channel, decreases from ∼200Å(2) below 0.1 eV to ∼12Å(2) at the highest energies studied. The production of NH(3) (+) is the only channel observed below 5 eV, above which a small amount of NH(2) (+) is also formed. In Xe(2+) reactions, the main products observed are NH(3) (+) and NH(2) (+). The charge transfer cross section decreases monotonically from ∼80 to ∼6Å(2) over the studied energy range. The NH(2) (+) cross section is similar to the charge transfer cross section at the lowest energies, and exhibits a second component above 0.4 eV, with a maximum of 65Å(2) at 0.7 eV, above which the cross section decreases to ∼30Å(2) at the highest energies studied. At energies above 10 eV, a small amount of NH(+) is also observed in Xe(2+) collisions. Product recoil velocity distributions were determined at selected collision energies, using guided-ion beam time-of-flight methods.