Vibrational excitation cross sections for non-equilibrium nitric oxide-containing plasma

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed vibrational excitation cross sections for nitric oxide molecules, derived from ab initio calculations, and demonstrates their importance in accurately modeling non-equilibrium plasma electron dynamics.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive set of vibrationally-resolved cross sections for NO, improving the accuracy of non-equilibrium plasma simulations and validating them against experimental data.

Findings

Vibrational relaxation times match experimental data.

New cross sections improve simulation accuracy.

Enhanced understanding of electron transport in NO plasma.

Abstract

A full set of vibrationally-resolved cross sections for electron impact excitation of NO(X2{\Pi}, v) molecules is calculated from ab initio molecular dynamics, in the framework of the local-complex-potential approach. Electron-vibration energy exchanges in non-equilibrium thermodynamic conditions are studied from a state-to-state model accounting for all electron impact excitation and de-excitation processes of the nitric oxide vibration manifold, and it is shown that the calculated vibration relaxation times are in good agreement with the experimental data. The new vibrational excitation cross sections are used in a complete electron impact cross section set in order to obtain non-equilibrium electron energy distributions functions and to calculate electron transport parameters in NO. It is verified that the new cross sections bring a significant improvement between simulations and experimental swarm data, providing an additional validation of the calculations, when used within the complete set of cross sections investigated in this work.