A Unified Mechanism for the Production of ZEKE States

ZEKE states are highly stabilized Rydberg states which exist below each ionic eigenstate of a molecular system even high up into the continuum. The stability and neutrality of these states is the basis on which the high resolution ZEKE technique for the study of molecular ions is built upon. A new mechanism is proposed for the production of ZEKE states from optically accessible, relatively short lived Rydberg states. The mechanism is based on experimental results for a range of fields and ion concentrations. The experiments were performed with pulsed and static electric fields of different magnitudes at various ion concentrations.