State-Specific Dissociation and Inelastic Rate Constants for Collisions of H2 with H and He

Abstract

Recent reports have called for planetary probe missions to the outer planets of the solar system. To support these missions, kinetic data for processes involving molecular hydrogen are required in order to conduct the necessary computational and experimental studies. The data available in the literature are currently incomplete owing to the broad range of temperatures required for these computational studies. In this work, the rate constants for the state-specific dissociation and inelastic scattering collisions between molecular hydrogen and H and He were calculated using the quasi-classical trajectory method in a range of translational energy between 0.1 and 15 eV. Comparisons with the state-specific cross sections reported in the literature are made for both systems. The full set of ro-vibrational state-specific cross sections is then used to compute the corresponding dissociation and inelastic reaction rate constants between 1000 and 30,000 K. Thermal and state-specific data are made available.