SEMIQUANTAL MODELING OF THERMAL VIBRATIONAL-RELAXATION OF DIATOMIC-MOLECULES

Vibrationally excited molecules play an important role in the spectros copy, energetics, and chemical behavior of a wide range of gaseous sys tems of scientific and applied interest. Unfortunately, many desired c ollisional relaxation rates have not yet been experimentally measured, and current theoretical methods are often inadequate or too cumbersom e for practical application. We report a semiquantal two-parameter sca ling method for predicting relaxation rates that is very simple to emp loy, and impressively fits the temperature and vibrational dependencie s of quantum mechanical and experimental collisional relaxation rates for several diatonic molecules (e.g., N-2, HF, OH, NO) over many order s of magnitude.