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Published on: January 9, 2014
Collision-induced alignment of H2O+ drifting in helium
1Chemistry Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z1, Canada.
Abstract:
The collision-induced alignment of H(2)O(+) drifting in helium is studied with a molecular dynamics method that has been extended to treat nonlinear rigid ions. Rotational distribution functions and averaged quantities are presented in terms of the rho formalism [M. Thachuk, Phys. Rev. A 72, 032722 (2005)], and it is shown that this description gives a very good agreement with simulation results. In addition to velocity and angular velocity autocorrelation functions, a velocity-angular velocity cross correlation function is introduced. This cross correlation function provides insight into the dynamical nature of the alignment mechanism.
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