Student Excellence Award Finalist: Critical review of the associative detachment reaction of molecular nitrogen with the anion of atomic oxygen for accurate modeling of nonthermal gas discharges and transient luminous events

The associative detachment reaction of molecular nitrogen, N₂, with the anion of atomic oxygen, O^-, has been included in several theoretical studies of nonthermal gas discharges, and is considered the basis of some recent findings with regards to transient luminous events [e.g., Luque and Gordillo-Vazquez, Nat. Geosci., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 22-25, 2012]. This process was introduced to explain the negligible electron attachment observed in current growth experiments in air (as opposed to pure molecular oxygen, O₂) [Moruzzi and Price, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 1434-1440, 1974, and references therein]. Specifically, it was suggested that O^- ions produced during a gas discharge in air, release the electron due to subsequent collision with N₂ molecules [Moruzzi and Price, 1974]. Hopper et al., [J. Chem. Phys., vol. 65, no. 12, pp. 5474-5494, 1976] demonstrated that this mechanism should occur only if N₂ is excited to at least the first vibrational level. On the contrary, Rayment and Moruzzi [Int. J. Mass Spectrom. Ion Phys., vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 321-326, 1978] interpreted their experimental results in terms of an associative detachment reaction between O^- and unexcited N₂. Here, we model the experiment in [Rayment and Moruzzi, 1978], identify errors in the theoretical description of that experiment, and provide an alternative interpretation of measurements in [Rayment and Moruzzi, 1978], which includes vibrationally excited N₂, exclusively. Further controlled experiments are required to reconcile the literature on the reaction of O^- with ground state N₂.