low-lyingelectronstatesofCO2.PDFVIP

3. Phys. B: At. Mol. Phys. 16 (1983) 657-669. Printed in Great Britain Cross sections for electron impact excitation of the low-lying electron states of CO2 Lee Mu-Tao? and Vincent McKoy A A Noyes Laboratory of Chemical Physicsf, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA Received 19 May 1982, in final form 14 October 1982 Abstract. Distorted-wave cross sections for the excitation of eight low-lying excited states (1,3L:, 1*31Ig I,3 r I u and 1,3Au) of COz by electrons in the 25 to 60 eV energy range are presented. We report both differential and integral cross sections. 1. Introduction Knowledge of the electron impact excitation cross sections of the low-lying electronic states of COzat low and intermediate energies is of great importance in many processes, e.g., the dissociation and recombination of COzwhich occurs in planetary atmospheres and in the COz laser (Land 1978, Strickland and Green 1969). Despite the wealth of experimental studies in both optical (Tanaka et a1 1960, Inn et a1 1953, Price and Simpson 1938, Rabalais et a1 1971) and electron impact (Lassettre and Shiloff 1965, Meyer and Lassettre 1965, Lassettre et a1 1968, Hall et a1 1973) spectroscopy, we are unaware of any studies of the electronic excitation cross section of CO2 in the low and intermediate impact energy range. Generalised oscillator strengths for some singlet excited states have been reported (McCurdyand McKoy 1974). SuchBorn-type approximations are known to be unreliable at low and intermediate impact energies. In view of the importance of the COz molecule in several applications, we have calculated the differential and integral cross sections for excitation of eight low-lying (1p32:, 1,3JJuand 1*3A,) excited states of COz by electron impact for impact energies in the 25 to 60eV range by a distorted-wave method. We have recently applied this distorted-wave method to study the electronic excitation processes in H2 (Lee et a1 1982), N2 (Lee and McKoy 1982a) and