Reactive quenching of OD A 2Σ+ by H2: Translational energy distributions for H- and D-atom product channels

Abstract

The H- and D-atom products from collisional quenching of OD A (2)Σ(+) by H(2) are characterized through Doppler spectroscopy using two-photon (2 (2)S ←← 1 (2)S) laser-induced fluorescence. Partial deuteration enables separation of the channel forming H + HOD products, which accounts for 75% of reactive quenching events, from the D + H(2)O product channel. The Doppler profiles, along with those reported previously for other isotopic variants, are transformed into product translational energy distributions using a robust fitting procedure based on discrete velocity basis functions. The product translational energy distribution for the H-atom channel is strongly peaked at low energy (below 0.5 eV) with a long tail extending to the energetic limit. By contrast, the D-atom channel exhibits a small peak at low translational energy with a distinctive secondary peak at higher translational energy (approximately 1.8 eV) before falling off to higher energy. In both cases, most of the available energy flows into internal excitation of the water products. Similar distributions are obtained upon reanalysis of D- and H-atom Doppler profiles, respectively, from reactive quenching of OH A (2)Σ(+) by D(2). The sum of the translational energy distributions for H- and D-atom channels is remarkably similar to that obtained for OH A (2)Σ(+) + H(2), where the two channels cannot be distinguished from one another. The product translational energy distributions from reactive quenching are compared with those obtained from a previous experiment performed at higher collision energy, quasiclassical trajectory calculations of the post-quenching dynamics, and a statistical model.