Inversion of a spectrally resolved limb radiance profile for the NO fundamental band

Abstract

A recursive algorithm was developed to invert spectrally resolved earth limb radiance profiles representing the non‐local thermodynamic equilibrium altitude regime and species/tangent heights that are optically thin. It was used to infer vertical distributions of temperature and excited NO density from data measured by the Spectral Infrared Rocket Experiment in the NO fundamental band near 5.3 µm. The solution for excited NO density was used to compute atmospheric cooling rates for the 5.3‐µm band and the de‐excitation rate constant ko for the reaction NO* + O → NO + O.

Quasiclassical trajectory study of NO vibrational relaxation by collisions with atomic oxygen

“…1,2 Vibrationally excited nitric oxide NO(v=1), mostly v=1, may be produced by the collisions of ground state nitric oxide NO(v=0) with atomic oxygen.…”

Quasiclassical trajectory study of the rotational distribution for the O+NO(v = 0) fundamental vibrational excitation

“…Specifically, the multisheeted DMBE PES is based on an 8 × 8 Hamiltonian matrix constructed via diatomics-in-molecules formalism (see, e.g., [27]), where each matrix element is dressed (corrected) with three-body energy terms that were calibrated using both theoretical and experimental data. In particular, of the manifold of eight 2 A PESs that is obtained upon diagonalization of the potential matrix, the ground-state (1 2 A ) PES describes accurately all topographical features (the well depth of 3.23 eV matches perfectly the experimental value [28]). It also reproduces the vibrational spectrum of the triatomic, as expected from the ES method mentioned above.…”

“…However, Quack and Troe [6] have used a statistical adiabatic model to calculate the rotational distribution of the nascent nitric oxide at higher altitudes, having predicted it to peak around the initial rotational levels. This suggests that the rotational envelopes of the 5.3-μm emission could be described by a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with the local translational temperature (as has been frequently assumed [2,7]), thus justifying the assumption of thermalized rotation.…”

“…Since the work of Sharma and Duff [8], higher quality ab initio calculations for both 2 A and 2 A PESs, as well as new analytical fits, have been reported that may be utilized to study the dynamics of NO 2 . For example Sayós et al have reported a series of studies [13,14] for different states of the NO 2 system, focusing mainly on the study of N + O 2 collision, whereas Ivanov et al [15] studied exchange and recombination on the O( 3 P ) + NO( 2 ) reaction with a newly fitted potential function.…”

“…Nitric oxide in its first vibrationally excited state NO(v = 1) is abundant in the Earth thermosphere, and the infrared emission resulting from de-excitation is known to play an important role on the cooling down mechanism of the atmosphere [1,2]. The P and R branches of the vibrational-rotational emission fall into the 5.3-μm region, and its spectra have been ob- tained with the Cryogenic Infrared Instrumentation for Shuttle (CIRRIS-1A) aboard the space shuttle Discovery.…”