MONTE-CARLO SIMULATION STUDY OF STATISTICAL LIMITS FOR ENERGY-TRANSFER IN BINARY MOLECULAR-COLLISIONS

Efficient Monte Carlo sampling methods are used to investigate the eff ect of the conservation of energy and angular momentum on energy trans fer in Br2 + Ar and Br2 + Br2 collisions. The effect of the conservati on of spatial configuration in the collision is also considered. The r esults show that angular momentum conservation has a small (10%-20%) b ut significant restraining effect on the energy transfer rate while th e conservation of the spatial configuration reduced it by nearly 50%. The effects of anharmonicity in the bond potential of the diatomic mol ecule are also studied and found to be significant. Comparison with tr ajectory calculations reemphasizes the observation that for small mole cules the energy transfer approaches the statistical limits only for s trong interaction potentials.