IMAGING OF ELECTRONICALLY INELASTIC COLLISIONS.

Author Institution: Combustion Research Facility, Sandia National LaboratoryWe have investigated the elastic and inelastic scattering in the $Cl + D_{2}$ system as a probe of the coupling between $Cl (^{2}P_{3/2}) + D^{2}$ potential energy surface and the $Cl^{\ast} ({^{2}}P_{1/2}) + D_{2}$ potential energy surface. Our experiments utilize a newly constructed cross molecular beam machine with velocity map ion imaging detection to probe all scattering into the $Cl^{\ast} ({^{2}}P_{1/2}$) channel at a collision energy of 1700 Collisions between $Cl (^{2}P_{1/2})$ which result in a non-adiabatic transition to the upper spin-orbit potential energy surface must partition $881 cm^{-1} (=E_{S.O., Cl})$ less energy into relative translation. Our ion spin-orbit changing collisions in the $Cl + D_{2}$ system and allow for an estimate of the total cross section for such collisions