Abstract
The problem of rotational excitation of a rigid rotor is formulated in a body-fixed frame of reference. Full account is taken of the simple form of the close-coupling equations to reduce the amount of computing time. In particular, the excitation of carbon monoxide (1 Sigma ground electronic state) by helium (1S ground electronic state) is considered, in the temperature conditions of the interstellar medium. Also, the validity of the centrifugal decoupling approximation is examined. It is found that good agreement is obtained in the partial cross sections for low J, the total angular momentum, and low rotor levels; for high J, the centrifugal decoupling cross sections converge too quickly.
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