Vibrational relaxation of CO by O atoms

The vibrational relaxation of carbon monoxide by atomic oxygen has been measured behind incident shock waves in the temperature range of 1800–4000 °K. The atomic oxygen was produced by the rapid thermal decomposition of ozone. The experimentally derived relaxation times can be expressed in the form ${\mathrm{p\hspace{0.17em}\tau }}_{\mathrm{CO–O}}=\exp {\text{(54\hspace{0.17em}T}}^{\text{−1/3}}\text{−7.3) μ}\sec ·\mathrm{atm}$ , which corresponds to a collisional probability of the order of 10⁻² for the vibration‐translation energy transfer. This is from two to three orders of magnitude larger than the probability for self‐relaxation by CO over the same temperature range.