VIBRATIONAL-RELAXATION OF HCL AS A FUNCTION OF XENON DENSITY - THE ROLE OF HCL-XE COMPLEXES

A treatment of the effect of vibrational predissociation of van der Wa als complexes on vibrational relaxation rates [Chem. Phys. 29, 253 (19 78)] has been extended by including V-V energy transfer between comple xed and uncomplexed species and the possibility of different V-T/R rel axation rates for complexed and uncomplexed species. These modificatio ns allow us to reproduce experimentally observed relaxation data for H CI (v = 1) over two orders of magnitude in xenon density. The dependen ce of the vibrational relaxation rate on density is discussed as are t he implications of the observed behavior on isolated binary collision formulations of vibrational energy relaxation processes.