Laser-Assisted Excitive Penning Ionization

Abstract

Lasers have been used to study chemical rate processes in basically two ways. Either one alters the reactant state distribution by laser excitation of discrete reactant transitions, or one probes the product state distribution as in laser induced fluorescence methods. In contrast, the effects of collisions themselves on radiation fields have been observed for a number of years, as in collision induced far infrared absorption, collisional redistribution of resonant radiation, and a variety of collisional line broadening experiments. A merger of the concepts of collision induced absorption and laser excited reagents would be alteration of the product state distribution by a radiation field which is resonant in some sense with the transient collision complex, rather than with the reactants or products alone.