A classical statistical theory for chemical reactions

Abstract

A trajectory approach is used to derive cross section expressions for the reactive and dissociative products of an A + BC collision in the statistical approximation. The formalism is sufficiently general to accommodate any definition of the strong coupling region. The theory is shown to satisfy time reversal symmetry. The role of canonical variables in statistical theories and the nature of the statistical approximation on a trajectory level are clarified. Problems of implementation are discussed for a variety of strong coupling regions and quantum statistical theories are reviewed in relation to the present classical formalism.