electronImpactDissociation

Electron Impact Dissociation

Works with a VSimPD license. An interaction of the form

\[e + AB \rightarrow A + B + e\]

This reaction models an electron induced dissociation process. Three product particles are created.

The final speeds of each particle are determined by calculating the final total energy in the center of mass frame (i.e. total final energy = total initial energy - dissociationEnergy). Then a loss fraction is calculated, f = finalEnergy/initialEnergy. The energy of the AB particle is then multiplied by f and split between A and B. The initial energy of the electron is multiplied by f to get the final electron energy. Two random angles are chosen to determine the direction for the final momentum. One random angle sets the direction for the two atoms (the products’ final momentum will be equal and opposite, i.e., back to back). A second random angle sets the direction of the product electron. Finally,the particles’ velocities are transformed back to the simulation frame.

Any RxnProcess Block block which points to a productGenerator of kind = electronImpactDissociation should have the Reactants and Products in the order:

reactants = [electron molecule]
products = [atom1 atom2 electron]

electronImpactDissociation Attributes

dissociationEnergy (float, required)

The energy required to dissociate the molecule in eV.

randomSeed (int, optional, default: random int)

Manually set a random seed used to determine the final velocities of the product particles.

The default is to choose a random seed at run time. To produce identical simulations, advanced users may want to manually set a seed. It is recommended not to include this parameter so that a different random number will be generated for each run.

Example electronImpactDissociation Block

<RxnProductGenerator productGenerator>
  kind = electronImpactDissociation
  dissociationEnergy = 4.77
  #randomSeed = 754
</RxnProductGenerator>