Kinetics of thermalization of fast nitrogen atoms beyond the hard sphere approximation
✍ Scribed by V Kharchenko; J Tharamel; A Dalgarno
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 712 KB
- Volume
- 59
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1364-6826
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✦ Synopsis
The thermalization of fast nitrogen atoms through elastic collisions with thermal oxygen atoms is studied by obtaining the energy distribution function of fast nitrogen atoms from a direct numerical solution of the Boltzmann kinetic equation. The kernel of the Boltzmann equation is constructed using quantum mechanically evaluated differential scattering cross sections. The contributions to the cross sections that arise from the six lowest NO molecular potential curves exhibit a marked dependence on both the energy and the scattering angle. It is shown that the classical scattering cross sections are an excellent approximation to the smooth curve obtained by averaging the quantum mechanical cross sections. The differences between the results of calculations of the collision kernel for the hard sphere cross sections and the actual cross sections are discussed and the steady state distribution function of the fast N atoms is compared with the results of kinetic calculations with the hard sphere approximation.