Quantum mechanical calculations of symmetric molecular charge exchange and vibrational excitations in O+2+O2 collisions

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Abstract
A scattering formulation is presented for symmetric molecular charge exchange treating the internal vibrational degrees of freedom and translation quantum mechanically. A unitary transformation is found to reduce the 2n coupled radial equations to two sets of n coupled equations. The formulation is applied to O2+(X 2Πg, v)+O2(X 3Σg−, v′) at 1, 8, and 36 eV center‐of‐mass collision energies. Convergence with respect to vibrational basis set size is found to be slower at lower energy. Integral cross sections and transition probabilities as a function of nuclear orbital angular momentum are presented. The integral cross sections summed over final levels for vibrational excitation and de‐excitation and for charge transfer are on the order of 10 Å2. Comparisons of earlier classical path calculations with the present results do not show quantitative agreement at these energies.