Effects of non-Boltzmann vibrational distributions on electron-molecule and bimolecular reaction rates

The role of non-equilibrium vibrational distributions in enhancing the rates of electron induced processes (dissociation, ionization and electronic excitation) as well as the formation rate of NO from vibrationally excited nitrogen molecules and atomic oxygen is analyzed by comparison with the corresponding rates obtained by using Boltzmann distributions. To this end we consider two Boltzmann distributions: the first one with the same energy as the non-equilibrium one, the second defined by the vibrational temperature of the 0-1 levels. Differences up to 100% are found in this theoretical comparison thus indicating the inaccuracy of reducing non-equilibrium vibrational distributions to Boltzmann ones.