Aims. We present an experimental investigation of the exothermic reactions of NH+, NH2+, and NH3+ ions with H2 at temperatures relevant for interstellar clouds. Methods. The reactions were studied using a variable-temperature 22-pole radio frequency ion trap instrument. Results. The temperature dependences of rate coefficients of these reactions have been obtained at temperatures from 15 up to 300 K. The reaction of NH+ with H2 has two channels, which lead to NH2+ ( ∼ 97%) and H+3 ( ∼ 3%) with nearly constant reaction rate coefficients (kaNH+(17 K) = 1.0 × 10−9 cm3 s−1 and kbNH+(17 K) = 4.0 × 10−11 cm3 s−1, respectively). The reaction of NH2+ with H2 produces only NH3+ ions. The measured rate coefficient monotonically decreases with increasing temperature from kNH2+(17 K) = 6 × 10−10 cm3 s−1 to kNH2+(300 K) = 2 × 10−10 cm3 s−1. The measured rate coefficient of the reaction of NH3+ with H2, producing NH+4, increases with decreasing temperature from 80 K down to 15 K, confirming that the reaction proceeds by tunnelling through a potential barrier.

and cations play a significant role in the chemistry of the cold interstellar medium and hence their hydrogen abstraction reactions with have to be included in ion chemical models. The reactions lead directly or indirectly to ions that subsequently recombine with electrons and dissociate into H atoms and . The experiments described in this paper provide rate coefficients ( and ) for the reactions of and with over a wide temperature range (from 15 to 300 K). A cryogenic 22-pole RF ion trap instrument was employed for this purpose. It was found that increases from at 17 K to at 263 K while is nearly constant, varying from at 17 K to at 218 K.

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Aims. This paper presents experimentally obtained rate coefficients for the weakly endothermic reaction OD − + H 2 → OH − + HD with ortho-and para-hydrogen at astrophysically relevant temperatures between 10 and 300 K. Methods. The reaction was studied with normal and para-enriched (99.5% para-H 2 ) hydrogen in a 22-pole ion trap. The measured temperature dependencies of reaction rate coefficients are analyzed using a model which assumes that the rotational energies of the two reactants are equivalent to the translational energy in driving the reaction. Results. At room temperature, the rate coefficients of reactions with both nuclear spin variants reach 7 × 10 −11 cm 3 s −1 , which is in good agreement with the previous results from ion trap and swarm experiments with normal hydrogen. Cooling down the trap slows down the reaction and leads, at a nominal trap temperature of 11 K, to a rate coefficient below 10 −14 cm 3 s −1 for paraenriched hydrogen. The fitted reaction endothermicity of 25.3 ± 2.2 meV agrees well with the literature value calculated in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, ∆H 0 = 24.0 meV. A simpler evaluation procedure, fitting the data with Arrhenius functions, results in p k = 16.8 × 10 −11 exp(−234 K/T ) cm 3 s −1 for pure para-hydrogen and o k = 9.4 × 10 −11 exp(−101 K/T ) cm 3 s −1 for pure orthohydrogen.

This work is motivated by many observations of nitrogen hydrides including their isotopologues in the interstellar space. We studied the formation of NH+ and ND+ ions in the nearly thermoneutral hydrogen abstraction reactions of N+ ions with H2, HD, and D2 at temperatures from 300 K down to 15 K using a variable-temperature 22-pole radio frequency ion trap. For the reaction of N+ with HD, the branching ratios for production of ND+ and NH+ ions were also determined. The activation energies of all four reaction channels were determined from the temperature dependencies of the measured reaction rate coefficients. Under the assumption of no energy barriers on the reaction paths, we derive the vibrationless energy change (i.e., the difference of equilibrium Born–Oppenheimer potential energies of products and reactants) in the reactions as ΔE e = (103 ± 3) meV.

Formation of OH+ in collisions of ground-state O+(4S) ions with normal H2 has been studied using a variable temperature 22-pole RF ion trap. From 300 to 30 K the measured reaction rate coefficient is temperature-independent, with a small decrease toward 15 K. The recent wave packet calculation predicts a slightly steeper temperature dependence. The rate coefficients at 300 and 15 K are almost the same, (1.4 ± 0.3) × 10−9 cm3 s−1 and (1.3 ± 0.3) × 10−9 cm3 s−1, respectively. The influence of traces of the two metastable ions, O+(2D) and O+(2P), has been examined by monitoring the H+ products of their reactions with H2, as well as by chemically probing them with N2 reactant gas.

We studied the reaction of doubly charged carbon C2+ (C iii) with molecular hydrogen, a possible source of the high, unexplained abundances of interstellar CH+. The experiment was carried out using the cryogenic linear 22-pole radio frequency ion trap. The measured reaction rate coefficient amounts to (1.5 ± 0.2) × 10−10 cm3 s−1, nearly independently of the covered temperature range from 15 to 300 K. In the product distribution study, the C+ ion was identified as the dominant product of the reaction. For the CH+ production, we determine an upper limit for the reaction rate coefficient at 2 × 10−12 cm3 s−1.

The recombination of deuterated trihydrogen cations with electrons has been studied in afterglow plasmas containing mixtures of helium, argon, hydrogen and deuterium. By monitoring the fractional abundances of H3(+), H2D(+), HD2(+) and D3(+) as a function of the [D2]/[H2] ratio using infrared absorption observed in a cavity ring down absorption spectrometer (CRDS), it was possible to deduce effective recombination rate coefficients for H2D(+) and HD2(+) ions at a temperature of 80 K. From pressure dependences of the measured effective recombination rate coefficients the binary and the ternary recombination rate coefficients for both ions have been determined. The inferred binary and ternary recombination rate coefficients are: αbinH2D(80 K) = (7.1 ± 4.2) × 10(-8) cm(3) s(-1), αbinHD2(80 K) = (8.7 ± 2.5) × 10(-8) cm(3) s(-1), KH2D(80 K) = (1.1 ± 0.6) × 10(-25) cm(6) s(-1) and KHD2(80 K) = (1.5 ± 0.4) × 10(-25) cm(6) s(-1).