Charge transfer cross sections of collisions of N<sup>3+</sup> ions with He atoms in low energy region

<sec>The collision process between N<sup>3+</sup> ions and He atoms is of great significance in astrophysics, interstellar space and laboratory plasma environment. The single- and double-charge transfer processes for the collisions of N<sup>3+</sup> with He atoms are studied by using the quantum-mechanical molecular-orbital close-coupling (QMOCC) method. The <i>ab initio</i> multireference single- and double-excitation configuration interaction (MRD-CI) methods are employed to obtain the adiabatic potentials and the radial and rotational coupling matrix elements that are required in the QMOCC calculation. In the present QMOCC calculations, 10 <sup>1</sup>Σ states, 8 <sup>1</sup>Π states and 4 <sup>1</sup>Δ states are considered, and total single- and double-charge transfer cross sections and state selection cross sections are calculated in an energy region from 3.16 × 10<sup>–3</sup> eV–24 keV (i.e., 2.25 × 10<sup>–4</sup> eV/u–1.73 keV/u). Comparison of our results with the previous theoretical and experimental results shows that our results agree well with the experimental values for the total double-charge transfer (DCT) cross sections. For the total single-charge transfer (SCT) cross sections, our QMOCC results are slightly higher than the experimental results in an energy region of 0.2–11 eV/u. When the energy is higher than 11 eV/u, the present QMOCC results are in good agreement with the experimental results. The total SCT cross section is significantly larger than the total DCT cross section, so SCT process is a dominant reaction process. For the SCT process, it can be observed that the charge transfer to N<sup>2+</sup>(2s2p<sup>2</sup> <sup>2</sup>D) and N<sup>2+</sup>(2s<sup>2</sup>2p <sup>2</sup>P°) is very important. It should be noted that although we and Liu et al. (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.84.042706"><i>Phys. Rev. A</i> 2011 <b>84</b> 042706</ext-link>) both used the QMOCC method to study the charge transfer cross section, our calculation results are still significantly different from their calculation results. It is due to the fact that Liu et al.’s calculations only considered 10 <sup>1</sup>Σ states and 8 <sup>1</sup>Π states, and ignored the effect of <sup>1</sup>Δ states.</sec><sec>The datasets presented in this paper are openly available at <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.j00213.00165">https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.j00213.00165</ext-link>.</sec>