Reexamination of ionospheric photochemistry

This paper reexamines the chemistry of N-2(+), NO+, O-2(+), and N+ by comparing densities from a photochemical model with data from the Atmosphere Explorer C satellite. These comparisons show that the measurements of N-2(+), NO+, O-2(+), and N+ density are well modeled with up-to-date reaction rates, solar EUV irradiances, and photoelectron fluxes. In particular, this study has resolved a long-standing problem wherein the previous investigations overestimated the measured N-2(+) density by a factor of 2. A new method of determining the important and controversial O+(D-2) + N-2 reaction rate from the Atmosphere Explorer C data is presented. This reaction rate determination agrees well with the latest laboratory measured reaction rate.