Journal article
Aerosol nucleation induced by a high energy particle beam
We have studied sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation in an atmospheric pressure reaction chamber using a 580 MeV electron beam to ionize the volume of the reaction chamber. We find a clear contribution from ion-induced nucleation and consider this to be the first unambiguous observation of the ion-effect on aerosol nucleation using a particle beam under conditions that resemble the Earth's atmosphere.
By comparison with ionization using a gamma source we further show that the nature of the ionizing particles is not important for the ion-induced component of the nucleation. This implies that inexpensive ionization sources - as opposed to expensive accelerator beams - can be used for investigations of ion-induced nucleation.
Language: | English |
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Year: | 2011 |
ISSN: | 19448007 and 00948276 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1029/2011GL047036 |
ORCIDs: | 0000-0002-8229-1512 , Enghoff, Martin Andreas Bødker , Pedersen, Jens Olaf Pepke and Svensmark, Henrik |