The effects of small quantities of hydrogen, deuterium and helium on vibrational relaxation of carbon dioxide

Abstract

The vibrational relaxation frequency measurements were made on mixtures of carbon dioxide and the light gases using a shock tube and a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The temperature range covered was 350–1200 °K. It was discovered that in the case of helium the effectiveness of the carbon dioxide-helium collision increases with increasing temperature while in the case of hydrogen and deuterium the collision number displays an anomalous temperature behaviour. At about 1000 °K all the three light gases are almost equally efficient in exciting the vibrational modes of carbon dioxide.