Reactive collisions between electrons and NO+ ions: rate coefficient computations and relevance for the air plasma kinetics

Extensive calculations of the rate coefficients for dissociative recombination (DR), elastic collisions, inelastic collisions (ICs) and superelastic collisions of NO+ ions on initial vibrational levels, , with electrons of energy between 10−5 and 10 eV have been performed, with a method based on multichannel quantum defect theory. Comparisons of the DR rate coefficients with the plasma experimental results give a good agreement, confirming that the vibrationally excited NO+ ions recombine more slowly than those in the ground state. Also, our ground state IC rate coefficients are very similar to previously computed R-matrix data. The rate coefficients have been fitted to a modified Arrhenius law, and the corresponding parameters are given, in order to facilitate the use of the reaction data in kinetical plasma modelling.