SELECTIVE DYNAMIC ENERGY TRANSFERS IN PROTON COLLISIONS WITH HYDROGEN-FLUORIDE

Earlier experimental data by Friedrich et al. found out, from time-of-flight experiments of collisions between H+ and HF molecules, that most of the available relative energy becomes transferred into internal rotations of the target and that vibrational excitation only begins to be noticeable around and above 30 eV of relative collision energy. The present theoretical and computational model starts from the potential energy function presented in the preceding paper and carries out quantum calculations that explicitly include the coupling of vibrational target states. The results indeed show very few vibrational excitations and rather large rotational energy transfers as the collision energy is increased up to 50 eV. Microscopic features of both the interaction and the dynamics are found to be responsible for such behavior, which brings the present calculations in agreement with experimental findings. (C) 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.