Electron Excitation and Ionization of the Chlorine Molecule

Despite its technological importance, many of the emission systems in molecular chlorine have received surprisingly little study. I will present our experimental measurements of absolute emission cross sections for 10 to 700 eV electrons incident on chlorine molecules. The emission systems include the dominant $\mbox{Cl}_2^+ \quad A\,^2\Pi \,-\,X\,^2\Pi $ and the Cl$_{2}$ systems at 256 nm and 306 nm. The $A-X$ system possesses a very dense band spectrum and I will discuss our efforts to extract individual vibrational cross sections and discuss this system's contribution to the total chlorine ionization cross section.