INVERSION OF EXPERIMENTAL-DATA TO GENERATE STATE-TO-STATE CROSS-SECTIONS FOR ROVIBRATIONALLY INELASTIC-SCATTERING OF CO2 BY HOT HYDROGEN-ATOMS

State-to-state integral cross sections for rovibrationally inelastic collisions between CO2 and hot hydrogen atoms are obtained by inversion of rotationally resolved population measurements of CO2 (0001). The inversion/fitting procedure is based upon the infinite order sudden (IOS) scaling law and employs a spline interpolating model to reduce the amount of information to be extracted. The experimental data used in the analysis was obtained using time domain tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy to measure rotationally resolved excitation in CO2 (0001) following the generation of translationally hot H atoms via H2S photolysis at 193 nm. The analysis utilizes data acquired at two temperatures, 292 and 223 K, in order to acquire additional information about the temperature independent scattering cross sections. Sensitivity analysis is employed to gauge the sensitivity of the extracted cross sections to uncertainties in the experimental data, and also to estimate the effect of additional measurements at different temperatures. The final extracted cross sections exhibit strong rotational inelasticity, with a propensity for scattering from 0000; J′ to both 0001; J = J′ and 0001; J = |J′ ± 41|. The largest state-to-state collision cross section corresponds to the (0000; J′ = 0) to (0001; J=41) transition and has a magnitude of (2.0 ± 0.4) × 10-3 Å2. © 1990 American Institute of Physics.