Chaotic scattering in reactive collisions: A classical analysis

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Abstract
The method of classical trajectories is used to model indirect reactive collisions of three collinear atoms. A very simple yet representative potential is considered: two kinematically coupled Morse potentials. The collision process displays chaotic scattering in the whole range of energy of interest. This transient chaos is studied in detail through a hierarchic analysis of the singularities of the time delay function. A ternary organization is found in the set of scattering trajectories built on a similar structure of the nonattracting chaotic set of bounded orbits. The origin of the ternary structure is explained in terms of simple periodic orbits and their invariant manifolds. Tools of the thermodynamical formalism are used to extract global quantities characterizing the scattering process. The implications of our findings from the point of view of chemical reactivity studies are also discussed.