A comparative study of rotational energy transfer in H+collisions with HF and CO2molecules

Abstract

The measured time of flight spectra and angular distributions for proton collisions with CO2 and HF targets at various energies (10-30 eV) reveal marked differences in the behaviour of these systems with regard to the dominance of either vibrational or rotational inelasticity during the encounters. Previous theoretical calculations of the full potential energy surfaces are employed to generate IOS integral cross sections for rotational energy transfer and a comparison with the corresponding experimental results shows that there is a good agreement between computed and measured quantities.