Relaxation of diatomic molecules by isotropic collisions: application to depolarizing collisions of CS by He atoms

Abstract

An irreducible tensor formalism is applied to isotropic collisions of diatomic molecules with 1S atoms. Explicit expressions of the generalized spectroscopic relaxation cross sections are given, including pressure broadening cross sections as well as collisional transfer and destruction cross sections of the k-component of the target density matrix. For applications in the high temperature limit, formulae within the infinite order sudden approximation (IOS) are given for 1Σ electronic state molecules and 2S+1Σ electronic state molecules in the Hund's case (b) limit. Application to collisions of CS by He atoms shows that a good agreement is found between close coupling and IOS results at moderate energies and that multipolar depolarizing rates within a j-level are of the same order of magnitude whatever the considered multipole order k whereas multipolar transfer rates are lower by an order of magnitude. Propensity rules in relation to the CS–He potential energy surface are given.