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Rotational Quenching of an Interstellar Gas Thermometer: CH₃CN⋯He Collisions
Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
  • M. Ben Khalifa
  • Ernesto Quintas-Sánchez, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Richard Dawes, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • K. Hammami
  • L. Wiesenfeld
Abstract

Among all the molecular species found in the interstellar medium, molecules with threefold symmetry axes play a special role, as their rotational spectroscopy allows them to act as practical gas thermometers. Methyl-cyanide (CH3CN) is the second most abundant of those (after ammonia). We compute in this paper the collisional dynamics of methyl-cyanide in collision with helium, for both the A-and the E-symmetries of CH3CN. The potential energy surface is determined using the CCSD(T)-F12b formalism and fit with convenient analytic functions. We compute the rotationally inelastic cross sections for all levels up to 510 cm-1 of collision energy, employing at low energy exact Coupled Channels methods, and at higher energies, approximate Coupled States methods. For temperatures from 7 K up to 300 K, rates of quenching are computed and most are found to differ from those reported earlier (up to a factor of a thousand), calling for a possible reexamination of the temperatures assigned to low density gasses.

Department(s)
Chemistry
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2020 Royal Society of Chemistry, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
7-23-2020
Publication Date
23 Jul 2020
PubMed ID
32716451
Disciplines
Citation Information
M. Ben Khalifa, Ernesto Quintas-Sánchez, Richard Dawes, K. Hammami, et al.. "Rotational Quenching of an Interstellar Gas Thermometer: CH₃CN⋯He Collisions" Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics Vol. 22 Iss. 31 (2020) p. 17494 - 17502 ISSN: 1463-9076
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/richard_dawes/141/