Abstract
Recent measurements of the cross sections for electronic state excitations in H2O have made it possible to calculate rates applicable to these excitation processes. We thus present here calculations of electron energy transfer rates for electronic and vibrational state excitations in H2O, as well as rates for excitation of some of these states by atmospheric thermal and auroral secondary electrons. The calculation of these latter rates is an important first step towards our aim of including water into a statistical equilibrium model of the atmosphere under auroral conditions.PACS Codes: 34.50.Gb 34.50.Ez
Highlights
Collisions with neutral molecules are an important process by which electrons in the atmosphere lose energy [1]
These were the first experimental studies to publish absolute values for the electronic state excitation cross sections in H2O and covered the incident electron energy range 15 to 50 eV, and excitation energies up to 12 eV. In addition another 19 "composite" electronic states, so called as some of the electronic states cannot be resolved from one another, are reported here for the first time. All these cross sections for electronic state excitation were used in the present calculations, along with cross sections for vibrational excitation previously determined by Yousfi and Benabdessadok [13]
2.1 Method The excitations covered in this work were the (010) bending mode vibration, the combined (100)+(001) stretching vibrational modes and the 25 electronic state excitations as listed in table 1
Summary
Collisions with neutral molecules are an important process by which electrons in the atmosphere lose energy [1]. A thorough study of electronic state excitation cross sections has made the calculation of these energy transfer and excitation rates possible for H2O Full details of those experiments can be found in Thorn et al [10,11] and Brunger et al [12], along with comparisons of the measurements with previous theoretical values. These were the first experimental studies to publish absolute values for the electronic state excitation cross sections in H2O and covered the incident electron energy range 15 to 50 eV, and excitation energies up to 12 eV. All these cross sections for electronic state excitation were used in the present calculations, along with cross sections for vibrational excitation previously determined by Yousfi and Benabdessadok [13]
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