Calculations of Fine-Structure Effects in O+ - O Collisions

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Project Summary Hickman/ATM-9409362 This project will involve theoretical calculations of the scattering of ionic and neutral atomic oxygen, one of the most important collision processes in the upper atmosphere. The coupling between O+ and O (a collision frequency) plays a crucial role in models of global atmospheric wind circulation and in determining the ion density in the ionosphere. There is a current discrepancy between calculated values of this collision frequency and values inferred from aeronomic experiments. All previous calculations of the frequency have ignored the fine-structure splitting of atomic oxygen as well as spin-orbit and rotational coupling between the states of O+2 during the collision. These effects are significant and may be large enough to remove the discrepancy.