Oxygen Molecule Formation and the Puzzle of Nitrogen Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide during Lightning Flash

Unlike the compounds of the natural air atmosphere, the lightning systems are primarily focused on NO(X²Π), NO₂(1²A'), and O(³P) concentrations that occurred newly and highly in the ground electronic structure. While the NO/NO₂ concentrations ratio is about 2000 during the lightning flash, this ratio becomes about 0.8 right after the lightning flash. The reason for this decrease in the ratio is the disappearance of the high temperature that prevents the formation of NO₂ (with the combination of NO and O) and of the photon energy that causes its dissociation (NO₂ + hv → NO + O) right after the lightning flash. However, this study will focus on the reactions that contribute to the NO concentration, except for the combination of N and O atoms during lightning flash. To do this, it was focused on the reactive scattering states (especially the NO-exchange) of the NO + O collision and the photo-dissociation of NO₂, which provide the formation of the NO molecule in the ground electronic state. This case raises important questions. To what extent do the NO-exchange reaction and the photo-dissociation of NO₂ contribute to the atmospherically observed NO molecules? or how can the vibrational quantum states of the NO molecules formed by the photo-dissociation be effected on the NO + O¹ collision to produce a NO¹ molecule? These conditions may contribute to the concentrations of NO high during lightning flashes. Under low collision energy (between 0.1 and 0.3 eV), the NO (v = 0) population dissociated by a photon can act as reactants in the NO-exchange reactive scattering on the doublet electronic state. Since it is assumed that all of the NO₂ molecules are due to NO in the lightning flash system, this is one of the reasons that makes the NO population so high during lightning flash. Therefore, in the light of considering that the lightning system supports the formation of highly vibrating molecular groups, it might also support the formation of O₂ molecules. In particular, it was shown that the v = 4 quantum state of the NO molecule over the doublet state between collision energies of 0.9-1.5 eV and the v = 5 quantum state of the NO molecule over the quartet state between collision energies of 1.0-1.5 eV contribute to O₂ formation.