Abstract
The ``ladder climbing'' model of Montroll and Shuler for the dissociation of diatomic molecules is used to evaluate the perturbation of vibrational distribution functions of diatomic oscillators in a bimolecular dissociation reaction. Explicit results are exhibited for the perturbation of initial Boltzmann and δ‐function distributions of the oscillators. A limited tabulation of the roots of the Gottlieb polynomials employed in these calculations is presented in the Appendix.