Chemical reaction versus vibrational quenching in low energy collisions of vibrationally excited OH with O

Abstract

Quantum scattering calculations are reported for state-to-state vibrational relaxation and reactive scattering in O + OH(v = 2 - 3, j = 0) collisions on the electronically adiabatic ground state (2)A'' potential energy surface of the HO2 molecule. The time-independent Schrödinger equation in hyperspherical coordinates is solved to determine energy dependent probabilities and cross sections over collision energies ranging from ultracold to 0.35 eV and for total angular momentum quantum number J = 0. A J-shifting approximation is then used to compute initial state selected reactive rate coefficients in the temperature range T = 1 - 400 K. Results are found to be in reasonable agreement with available quasiclassical trajectory calculations. Results indicate that rate coefficients for O2 formation increase with increasing the OH vibrational level except at low and ultralow temperatures where OH(v = 0) exhibits a slightly different trend. It is found that vibrational relaxation of OH in v = 2 and v = 3 vibrational levels is dominated by a multi-quantum process.