Vibrational relaxation of CO by O atoms

The vibrational relaxation of carbon monoxide by atomic oxygen has been measured behind incident shock waves in the temperature range of 1800–4000 °K. The atomic oxygen was produced by the rapid thermal decomposition of ozone. The experimentally derived relaxation times can be expressed in the form p τCO–O=exp(54 T−1/3−7.3) μsec·atm, which corresponds to a collisional probability of the order of 10−2 for the vibration-translation energy transfer. This is from two to three orders of magnitude larger than the probability for self-relaxation by CO over the same temperature range.