MONTE-CARLO CALCULATIONS OF ELECTRON-TRANSPORT COEFFICIENTS IN H-2 - 1ST SIMULATIONS OF THE TOWNSEND-HUXLEY EXPERIMENT

The aim is to get additional evidence to assist in resolving the discrepancy between swarm-derived, theoretical and beam-measured vibrational cross sections for the case v = 0 --> 1. Good agreement between Monte-Carlo and experimental transport data is obtained with the swarm-derived cross sections. However, some simulations relevant to the Townsend-Huxley experiment call into question the accuracy of the characteristic energies used in swarm analyses. Possible reasons of the observed discrepancies between Monte-Carlo and experimental data and expected implications even on the accuracy of the cross sections in H-2 are discussed.