Quantum mechanical calculations of symmetric molecular charge exchange and vibrational excitations in O+2+O2 collisions

Abstract

A scattering formulation is presented for symmetric molecular charge exchange treating the internal vibrational degrees of freedom and translation quantum mechanically. A unitary transformation is found to reduce the 2n coupled radial equations to two sets of n coupled equations. The formulation is applied to O2+(X 2Πg, v)+O2(X 3Σg−, v′) at 1, 8, and 36 eV center-of-mass collision energies. Convergence with respect to vibrational basis set size is found to be slower at lower energy. Integral cross sections and transition probabilities as a function of nuclear orbital angular momentum are presented. The integral cross sections summed over final levels for vibrational excitation and de-excitation and for charge transfer are on the order of 10 Å2. Comparisons of earlier classical path calculations with the present results do not show quantitative agreement at these energies.