The role of symmetry in collisions of N2 with N+2

Abstract
Classical trajectory methods have been used to explore the excitation of vibrations in gas‐phase collisions of the nitrogen molecular ion with its parent molecule. The near symmetry of the reactants is shown to result in a high probability that the two molecules are excited by an equal amount of energy. This provides a possible explanation of the molecular beam measurements that show that the total number of vibrational energy quanta excited in the collision is, with a high probability, even.