A semiclassical, nonperturbative approach to collision-induced transitions between rotational levels for the N2–Ar system

Abstract

A semiclassical and nonperturbative approach in which coupling between translational and rotational degrees of freedom is also taken into account is developed to compute rotationally inelastic transition probabilities of linear molecule–atom collisions. This approach is applied to N₂–Ar collisions. The transfer of rotational, translational, and interaction energies is also computed during collisions. The results show that if the coupling between rotational and translational degrees of freedom is neglected, the computed transition probabilities change significantly for strong collisions, although there are no significant changes in the corresponding trajectories.