title: Low-temperature rotational relaxation of CO in self-collisions and in collisions with Ne and He.
abstract: The low-temperature rotational relaxation of CO in self-collisions and in collisions with the rare-gas atoms Ne and He has been investigated in supersonic expansions with a combination of resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) spectroscopy and time-of-flight techniques. For the REMPI detection of CO, a novel 2 + 1' scheme has been employed through the A(1)Pi state of CO. From the measured data, average cross sections for rotational relaxation have been derived as a function of temperature in the range 5-100 K. For CO-Ne and CO-He, the relaxation cross sections grow, respectively, from values of approximately 20 and 7 A(2) at 100 K to values of approximately 65-70 and approximately 20 A(2) in the 5-20 K temperature range. The cross section for the relaxation of CO-CO grows from a value close to 40 A(2) at 100 K to a maximum of 60 A(2) at 20 K and then decreases again to 40 A(2) at 5 K. These results are qualitatively similar to those obtained previously with the same technique for N(2)-N(2), N(2)-Ne, and N(2)-He collisions, although in the low-temperature range (T < 20 K) the CO relaxation cross sections are significantly larger than those for N(2). Some discrepancies have been found between the present relaxation cross sections for CO-CO and CO-He and the values derived from electron-induced fluorescence experiments.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Química Física, Facultad de Química, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Amaral
authors.forename: F J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Aoiz
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bañares
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Barr
authors.forename: V J
authors.initials: VJ
authors.lastname: Herrero
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Martínez-Haya
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Menéndez
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Pino
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Tanarro
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Torres
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Verdasco