DETERMINATION OF ELECTRON-ION RECOMBINATION CONSTANTS FROM BALLISTIC EXPERIMENTS

A solution of the linearized equations of a chemically nonequilibrium boundary layer describing the turbulent axisymmetric flow in the far w ake behind a body flying at a hypersonic velocity is used to process e xperimental measurements of the electron density in the wake. The solu tion of the nonlinear kinetic equation for the electron density in a m ixture of air with a ''recombining' admixture, obtained by quadrature, is quite general. The inverse problem is posed of determining the ele ctron recombination rate constants from measurements of the distributi ons of integrated quantities associated with the electron density. An algorithm is proposed for solving this inverse problem. As an example, solutions of the inverse problem are obtained for mixtures of air and xenon. The rate constant for the dissociative recombination Xe2+ + e was found from aeroballistic experiments performed at the Institute of Mechanics, Moscow State University, and was in satisfactory agreement with the published data.