Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Cooling of interstellar formaldehyde by collision with helium: an accurate quantum mechanical calculation

Thesis/Dissertation ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/4141257· OSTI ID:4141257
 [1]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
In order to test a collisional pumping model as a mechanism for cooling the 6 cm and 2 cm doublets of interstellar formaldehyde, a quantum mechanical scattering calculation is performed. To obtain the intermolecular interaction between H2CO(1A1) and He(1S) two calculations are performed, a Hartree-Fock (HF) potential surface and a configuration interaction (CI) surface. A basis set of better than ''triple zeta plus polarization'' quality is used to compute the HF portion of the potential energy surface. This portion is highly anisotropic and has a slight attraction arising from induction effects at intermolecular separations around 9 a.u. The HF surface is modified through a series of CI calculations. Correlation is found to have little effect in the strongly anisotropic repulsive region of the interaction potential but dominates the well and long-range regions. The maximum well depth is attained for in-plane approaches of He and lies in the range 35-40°$K for arbitrary theta at center of mass separation of 7.5 a.u. The entire surface is fit to a spherical harmonic expansion to facilitate scattering applications.
Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
US Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
NSA Number:
NSA-33-001647
OSTI ID:
4141257
Report Number(s):
LBL--3940
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English