Implications of electron detachment in associative collisions of atomic oxygen anion with molecular nitrogen for modeling of transient luminous events

Electron detachment from negative ion of atomic oxygen, O-, is important for understanding of lightning-induced upper atmospheric discharges. Contrary to previous studies, Rayment and Moruzzi [1978] argue that the associative detachment reaction of O- with molecular nitrogen, N2, proceeds with N2 in its ground state, and calculate the reaction rate coefficient as a function of the reduced electric field. In this work we analyze the experimental setup in [Rayment and Moruzzi, 1978] and demonstrate that (i) vibrationally excited N2 may have in fact contaminated the results, (ii) the theoretical approach in [Rayment and Moruzzi, 1978] requires corrections, and (iii) the rate calculations provided in [Rayment and Moruzzi, 1978] are inconsistent. As the vibrational temperature of N2 remains relatively low in the initial stages of gas discharges in air, i.e., streamer formation, we conclude that if in fact vibrationally excited N2 is required for the O-+N2 -> N2O+e reaction to proceed, the process will happen only in later stages of the discharge, e.g., during streamer to leader transition. Furthermore, controlled experiments are required to reconcile the literature on the reaction of O- with ground state N2.