Reaction probability and energy transfer in collisions of sodium atoms with sodium dimers

Abstract

The MOnte Carlo classical trajectory technique was employed to study reaction probability and energy transfer in collisions of sodium atoms with sodium dimers. The calculations were carried out for a fixed total collisional energy of 14 kcal/mole. The relative amounts of initial relative translation, rotational, and vibrational energy were varied in order to study the effects of different partitionings of the total energy. In addition, two fixed initial configurations of the atom and dimer were investigated. It was found that the behavior of the reaction probability plotted as a function of impact parameter, the reactive cross section, and the amount of energy transferred for both reactive and nonreactive inelastic collisions were very sensitive to both the amount of initial relative translational energy and to the partitioning of the initial dimer energy between rotational and vibrational energy. For the higher values of relative translational energy, nonreactive collisions were much more important than nonreactive ones in effecting relaxation of the dimers, while the opposite situation was found at low relative translational energies.