Electron impact vibrational excitation in plasmas

漫射等离子体中电子对分子的振动激发，如在彗星昏迷中发现的或用于工业蚀刻的，是一个关键但知之甚少的过程。激发的振动状态可以发射光子，从而引起可观察到的特征发射，也可以成为进一步过程的垫脚石，例如通过进一步的电子撞击进行解离。振动激发截面即使对振动基态的激发也是难以测量的，而对激发态的激发基本上是无法测量的。建议是研究关键自然分子（如水）和蚀刻等离子体（如NF， NF2和NF3）的振动激发。这项研究将通过开发英国分子r矩阵代码（UKRMol）来完成，该代码是在EPSRC的各种资助下开发的，并构成了Quantemol- n专家系统的基础。这两个代码都被用来研究电子碰撞激发，这对纯物理研究（如电子撞击旋转激发）和等离子体物理（如电子撞击解离和电离）都很重要。到目前为止，只研究了双原子分子共振激发的特殊情况，使用的是独立的代码和不可扩展的程序。

The vibrational excitation of molecules by electrons in diffuse plasma, such as those found in cometary coma or used in industrial etching, is a key but poorly understood process. Excited vibrational states can either emit photons giving rise to tell-tale observable signature emissions or be a stepping-stone to further processes such as dissociation via further electron impacts. Vibrational excitation cross sections are hard to measure even for excitations from the vibrational ground state and essentially unmeasured for excited states. The proposal is to study vibrational excitation for key molecules naturally (such as water) and etching plasmas (such as NF, NF2 and NF3). This study will be performed by developing the UK Molecular R-matrix code (UKRMol) which were developed under various EPSRC grants and forms the basis of the Quantemol-N expert system distributed by Quantemol Ltd. Both these codes have been used to study electron collisional excitations of importance both for pure physics investigations (eg electron impact rotational excitation) and plasma physics (eg electron impact dissociation and ionisation). Thus far vibrational excitation has only been studied for the special case of resonant excitation of diatomic molecules using a standalone code and a non-extendable procedure.