Rotational Excitation of Ion—Molecule Reaction Products: Comparison of the Statistical Phase-Space Model with Experiment

The statistical phase‐space theory of chemical reactions has been used to compute vibrational and rotational distributions of ${\mathrm{N}}_2^{\mathrm{*+}}$ formed in thermal reactions of rare‐gas ions with nitrogen. Recent spectroscopic data have been used to estimate the rotational and vibrational state populations of ${\mathrm{N}}_2^{\mathrm{*+}}$ from these bimolecular interactions. Experimental product state distributions compare favorably with those computed from the statistical phase‐space treatment for thermoneutral or slightly exothermic reactions; however, discrepancies are observed between theory and experiment for moderately exothermic reactions.