V. Atomic Resonance and Scattering Academic and Research Staff

The advent of gas lasers has caused considerable interest in energy-transfer mechanisms that would create or degrade a population inversion. In molecular gases, rotational energy transfer (RET) is by far the most probable collision process, being typically 1-2 orders of magnitude more likely than vibrational transfer and 2-3 orders of magnitude more likely than electronic energy transfer. We have measured nearly 500 thermally averaged rate constants, with typical experimental errors of 6-10%, for the process