Ionization In Collisions Between Excited Sodium Dimers and Atoms
Associative ionizing molecule-atom collisions Na-2(A(1) Sigma(u)(+)) + Na(3p) --> Na-3(+) + e have been observed at simultaneous excitation of dimers and atoms by means of two lasers. Measurements of the relevant ionization current show that the cross section of molecule-atom ionizing collisions exceeds by an order of magnitude the cross section of the well-known atom-atom associative ionization N