Intra- and Intermolecular Vibrational De-excitation in Impulsive Atom–Diatomic Molecule Collisions

Abstract

The de‐excitation of vibrationally energetic Morse oscillators via impulsive collision with an atom is discussed. In certain types of atom–oscillator systems intramolecular vibration‐to‐rotation energy transfer is more important than intermolecular vibration‐to‐translation transfer. Since the efficiency of this intramolecular de‐excitation has a different dependence on particle mass and collision energy than does the intermolecular de‐excitation, restricting consideration to the latter, e.g., using a collinear collision model, does not always lead to an adequate description of the de‐excitation process.