Restrictions on the potential and cross section for collisions between rigid rotors

摘要

A restricted distortedhyphen;wave treatment of the total cross section when two rigid diatomic molecules with orbital and nuclear spin angular momenta collide is examined. There are certain restrictions on the intermolecular potential and on the possible combinations of the various quantum numbers. These restictions are examined for the lowest order nonspherical elastic and the lowest order inelastic contributions to the total cross section. The effects of degeneracy averaging and of collisions between indistinguishable molecules are also briefly examined.