A rigorous implementation of the Landau-Teller approximation for adiabatic invariants

Rigorous bounds on the rate of energy exchanges between vibrational and translational degrees of freedom are established in simple classical models of diatomic molecules. The results are in agreement with an elementary approximation introduced by Landau and Teller. The method is perturbative theory 'beyond all orders', with diagrammatic techniques (tree expansions) to organize and manipulate terms, and to look for compensations, like in recent studies on KAM theorem homoclinic splitting