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.