ANGULAR MOMENTA CORRELATION IN KINEMATICALLY CONSTRAINED REACTIONS - II - APPLICATION TO THE B-]BO+H SYSTEM(OH)

Extensive quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations have been carr ied out to study the disposal of both rotational and orbital angular m omentum in the B + OH --> BO + H reaction. The potential energy surfac e (PES) of this reaction shows two minima associated with the HOB and HBO configurations. In addition, two distinct PESs were used each havi ng a different geometrical structure of the HOB intermediate: bent for surface 1 and linear for surface 2. For the title reaction the produc t angular momentum disposal shows significant deviations from the kine matic limit expected for a heavy + heavy-light (HH'L) reaction. The an alysis of the product angular momenta distribution clearly indicates a correlation with the topology of the PES used. It was found that whil e the insertion mechanism associated with PES1 (HOB bent intermediate) favours a significant disposal into product rotational and orbital mo menta, little disposal into both momenta is obtained for reactive traj ectories occurring through the collinear HOB intermediate of PES2, for which BO is highly stretched. A. simple modification of the conventio nal kinematic expressions, aimed at incorporating the effect of the dy namics into the angular momenta transfer, is proposed and tested. Modi fied expressions give results strongly consistent with those obtained from QCT calculations.