ABSTRACT
Thomas billiard-type collisions are not limited exclusively to electronic transfer. A heavy particle could also undergo transfer from a target to a projectile via Thomas double scatterings. For instance, a whole atom or a radical from a molecular target (MT) might be captured by the incident particle through two consecutive encounters P–A–C′. Adopting the purely classical Thomas picture and assuming that MT is at rest, it becomes immediately evident that capture via the P–A–C′ mechanism would only be possible if the momenta of the projectile P and the transferred atom are sufficiently commensurate, similarly to the electronic counterpart. More experiments provided evidence of Thomas double scatterings in ion–molecule encounters under the cusp conditions.
