Charged particle bombardment alters the physical and chemical properties of extraterrestrial icy surfaces by simultaneously producing radiolytic products and sputtered material. To better understand these phenomena, we measure the total sputtering yield of H₂O-ice induced by 0.5–5 keV Ar⁺ at temperatures between 40 and 120 K, using microbalance gravimetry as our analytical tool. In addition, we also estimate the sputtered flux of radiolytic products formed during irradiation and in both cases find good agreement with comparable laboratory studies. At 120 K, we find that the O₂/H₂O sputtered ratio increases nearly linearly with the ion range suggesting that the ions are stopping at depths where O₂ is still efficiently being produced below the surface. Furthermore, we find that although theoretical models appear to over predict our O₂ sputtering yields by about a factor of three, we can make a small adjustment to this model, which improves the agreement between the model and the laboratory data significantly. This empirical adjustment may have implications for models of energetic processing that occurs on extraterrestrial icy surfaces, such as Europa, where low-energy ions are thought to be the primary source producing O₂ from sputtering of the surface H₂O-ice.

带电粒子轰击通过同时产生辐射分解产物和溅射物质而改变了地球外冰面的物理和化学性质。为了更好地理解这些现象，我们使用微量天平重量分析仪作为测量工具，测量了在40至120 K之间的温度下，由0.5–5 keV Ar ⁺引起的H ₂ O冰的总溅射产率。此外，我们还估计了辐照过程中形成的辐射分解产物的溅射通量，在两种情况下均与可比的实验室研究很好地吻合。在120 K下，我们发现O ₂ / H ₂ O溅射比随离子范围几乎呈线性增加，这表明离子停止在O _2的深度仍然可以有效地在地下开采。此外，我们发现尽管理论模型似乎过度预测了我们的O ₂溅射产率约三倍，但我们可以对该模型进行少量调整，从而显着改善了模型与实验室数据之间的一致性。这种经验性调整可能会对在地球上冰冷的表面（例如欧罗巴）上发生的高能处理模型产生影响，在该模型中，低能离子被认为是从表面H ₂ O-冰的溅射产生O ₂的主要来源。