Ion lifetimes in gaseous ammonia

Abstract

Communications to the Editor sweep study of a(s)-a field pioneered to a large extent by the measurements of Takahashi and Nagasawa. The same goes for the molecular weight dependence argued by NTN. True, low to medium values of a satisfactorily obey Fixman's equation6 a8 -1 -v MVa (9) but as Takahashi, Nagasawa, and coworkers point out themselves1-3 their high a's increase with M1/2 less rapidly than required by the above equation. (Unfortunately the relevant points are not reproduced in the figures given by the authors; still they may be easily extracted from the tabulated data.) On the other hand, as stated before, the wide sweep variation of a with Ml/t, for all m2 > 2, is quite adequately described by the author's eq 5.