COLLISIONAL PUMPING OF ALPHA-DOUBLET TRANSITIONS IN CH AND OH BY H-2 AND HE

The mechanism of inversion of the rotational ground states of the CH and OH radicals. proposed by Bertojo, Cheung and Townes, is reexamined. From considerations of the symmetry and form of the interaction with the spherically symmetric perturbers para-H2 and He, we show that present knowledge of the potential energy surfaces enables the efficiency of the collisional pumping mechanism to be determined only to within a rather wide range. We specify the minimum additional information on the potential which is required in order to solve the problem and attempt to infer what the answer may be. © 1979.