A Quasiclassical trajectory study of collisional excitation in O(³P)+CO₂

The quasiclassical trajectory method is used to calculate cross sections for vibrational and rotational excitation in collisions of CO₂ with O(³P) at relative translational energies from 2.2 to 6.0 eV. Rotational excitation is dominant at all but the highest energies. The largest vibrational excit cross sections for collisions with CO₂(000) are to excited bending states such as (010), (020), etc., and to excited symmetric stretch states. The 000 → 001 cross section is found to be quite small (≤2 × 10^{-18 cm2}) over the entire energy range, but the cross sections for excitation of combination states such as (NN′1) are found to be considerably larger. Indeed the total asymmetric stretch excitation cross section is similar in magnitude to that obtained for Ar + CO₂ in recent molecular beam experiments.