Photodissociation of triatomic molecules: Rotational scattering effectsa)

Abstract

An exact quantum method for calculating the state-to-state direct photodissociation probabilities for arbitrary (linear or bent) triatomic molecules is presented. It is shown that this method, which requires the accumulation of Franck–Condon overlap integrals between the initial state and a scattering state satisfying arbitrary scattering boundary conditions, is equivalent to the solution of the driven equations of Band, Freed, and Kouri. For both HCN and ICN the effects of variation of the final state potential on the vibrational and rotational distributions of the CN fragments are examined. Agreement of our exact calculations with the approximate calculations of Morse and Freed is very good.