Quantum mechanical investigation of N+N2 collision: state-to-state non-reaction and exchange reaction probabilities and rate constants

We present a state-to-state dynamical calculation on the exchange reaction N+N2→N2+N and the non-reaction N+N2→N+N2 based on the potential energy surface published by Mankodi et al. The calculation is performed using the time-independent quantum reaction scattering program. The reactivity of both reaction processes is discussed by reaction properties of vibrational quantum numbers v=0-3 and rotational quantum numbers j=0-32 (such as cumulative reaction probability, state-to-state reaction probabilities, and cross sections of N exchange, state-to-state rate constants for both reactions). The threshold energy of the exchange reaction can decrease with the decrease of vibrational excitation or the increase of rotational excitation. By using the J-shifting approximation, rate constants are reported for both reactions. The comparison of the presented total rate constant of the N+N2 exchange reaction with the previous results shows that the quantum effect is not negligible at low temperatures. For the exchange reaction, the rate constant at 500K decreases by about 10 orders of magnitude when the vibrational level of N2 increases from 0 to 7, indicating that the rate constants are sensitive to the initial vibrational level of N2 at low temperatures. For non-reactive collisions, the rate constants have little effect on the initial ro-vibrational levels of N2 at low temperatures.

Exactly solvable 1D model explains the low-energy vibrational level structure of protonated methane

A new one-dimensional model is proposed for the low-energy vibrational quantum dynamics of CH+5 based on the motion of an effective particle confined to a 60-vertex graph Γ60 with a...

Properties of OH roto-vibrational level populations in the Earth's mesopause region

<p>Chemiluminescent OH airglow emission dominates the nighttime radiation of the Earth's atmosphere in the near-infrared wavelength regime. It is an important indicator of the state and variability of the mesopause region at about 90 km. However, the interpretation of the line intensities suffers from uncertainties in the knowledge of the complex roto-vibrational level population distribution, which is far from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). For a better understanding, we investigated these populations in detail mainly based on a high-quality high-resolution mean spectrum from the UVES echelle spectrograph at Cerro Paranal in Chile, which allowed us to measure about 1,000 individual lines including numerous resolved Λ-doublet components between 560 and 1060 nm. As the quality of the currently available sets of OH Einstein-A coefficients is not sufficient for accurate population retrievals, we derived an improved set by a semi-empirical approach, which benefited from the measurement of multiple lines with the same upper level. The resulting populations indicate a clear bimodality for each vibrational level, which is characterised by a cold component indicating the ambient temperature at the OH layer heights and a hot non-LTE component dominating high rotational levels. Our promising two-population fits allowed us to constrain the non-LTE contributions to rotational temperatures based on lines with upper states with low rotational and fixed vibrational quantum number, which are widely used to estimate temperatures in the mesopause region. The bimodality is also clearly indicated by the different population changes depending on the effective altitude of the OH emission layer. Only the cold component significantly decreases with increasing altitude. Our results will be very useful for the challenging modelling of the OH thermalisation process.</p>

Influences of Rotational Speed Variations on the Flow-Induced Vibrational Performance of a Prototype Reversible Pump Turbine in Spin-No-Load Mode

During the spin-no-load mode, vibrational performance of the reversible pump turbine is an important criterion for the evaluation of the operational performances of the power station. In the present paper, the influences of rotational speed variations on the vibrational performances of the whole unit (including the top cover, the upper, and the lower brackets) are experimentally investigated with discussions of their sources and propagation characteristics. According to the whole vibrational levels and the dominant frequencies of the vibration signals obtained at the top cover, the investigated cases with different rotational speeds could be divided into three partitions with their main characteristics given as follows. In the first partition (with low rotational speeds), the vibrational level is quite limited, and its source is the pressure fluctuation generated by the swirling vortex rope in the draft tube. In the second partition (with medium rotational speeds), the vibrational level gradually increases and its source is the mechanical aspects of the impeller rotation. In the third partition (with high rotational speeds), the vibrational level is prominent with a prominent swirling vortex rope in the draft tube and intensive rotor–stator interactions in the vaneless space (VS). For the vibrations of the upper and the lower brackets, the vibrations mainly originate from the mechanical aspects of the impeller rotation and the amplitudes of the dominant frequency also increase with the increment of the rotational speed. Finally, differences between the vibrational performances of the spin-no-load mode and the generating mode are discussed.

Electron-Impact Dissociation of Vibrationally-Excited Molecular Hydrogen into Neutral Fragments

We present convergent close-coupling (CCC) calculations of electron-impact dissociation of vibrationally-excited molecular hydrogen into neutral fragments. This work follows from our previous results for dissociation of molecular hydrogen in the ground vibrational level [Scarlett et al., Eur. Phys. J. D 72, 34 (2018)], which were obtained from calculations performed in a spherical coordinate system. The present calculations, performed utilizing a spheroidal formulation of the molecular CCC method, reproduce the previous dissociation cross sections for the ground vibrational level, while allowing the extension to scattering on excited levels.

Sub-Doppler laser cooling of $^{39}$K via the 4S$\to$5P transition

We demonstrate sub-Doppler laser cooling of ^{39}39K using degenerate Raman sideband cooling via the 4S_{1/2} \rightarrow1/2→5P_{1/2}1/2 transition at 404.8 nm. By using an optical lattice in combination with a magnetic field and optical pumping beams, we obtain a spin-polarized sample of up to 5.6 \times 10^{7}5.6×107 atoms cooled down to a sub-Doppler temperature of 4 \upmuμK, reaching a peak density of 3.9 \times 10^{9}3.9×109 atoms/cm^{3}3, a phase-space density greater than 10^{-5}10−5, and an average vibrational level of \langle \nu \rangle=0.6⟨ν⟩=0.6 in the lattice. This work opens up the possibility of implementing a single-site imaging scheme in a far-detuned optical lattice utilizing shorter wavelength transitions in alkali atoms, thus allowing improved spatial resolution.