Relaxation of anharmonic molecules

Abstract

The inclusion of anharmonic effects is important in vibrational population inversions in CO-lasers [1, 2], in relaxation processes in jets [3], in thermal dissociation [1], in the kinetics of chemical reactions with high thresholds [4], etc. Usually these effects are studied by including anharmonic corrections to the kinetic constants in the discrete model of single-quantum transitions or in the diffusion approximation [1, 2]. In [5] a method was given of solving the relaxation equations fro arbitrary forms of the rate constants and the spectrum of the molecule. The method is valid when the ratio of the population densities of neighboring levels varies smoothly with quantum number. It was shown in [5] that this approximation can be used to construct analytical solutions for a wide class of problems. In the present paper the method of [5] is extended to the case of equations with variable coefficients. The properties of the solutions for VT-relaxation of anharmonic molecules are analyzed, and the inclusion of sources is considered. A simple method of taking into account multiple-quantum transitions is given, as well as an extension of the method to an arbitrary mixture of gases. The population densities are calculated and the possibility of using our solutions in relaxation gas dynamics is discussed.