Fine and Hyperfine Collisional Excitation of C₆H by He
Abstract
Hydrogenated carbon chains have been detected in interstellar and circumstellar media and accurate modelling of their abundances requires collisional excitation rate coefficients with the most abundant species. Among them, the C6H molecule is one of the most abundant towards many lines of sight. Hence, we determined fine and hyperfine-resolved rate coefficients for the excitation of C6H(X2π ) due to collisions with He. We present the first interaction potential energy surface for the C6H-He system, obtained from highly correlated ab initio calculations and characterized by a large anisotropy due to the length of the molecule. We performed dynamical calculations for transitions among the first fine structure levels (up to J = 30.5) of both spin-orbit manifolds of C6H using the close-coupling method, and rate coefficients are determined for temperatures ranging from 5 to 100 K. The largest rate coefficients for even ΔJ transitions conserve parity, while parity-breaking rate coefficients are favoured for odd ΔJ. Spin-orbit changing rate coefficients are several orders of magnitude lower than transitions within a singlemanifold. State-to-state hyperfine-resolved cross-sections for the first levels (up to J = 13.5) in the Ω = 3/2 spin-orbit manifold are deduced using recoupling techniques. Rate coefficients are obtained and the propensity rule ΔJ = ΔF is seen. These new data will help determine the abundance of C6H in astrophysical environments such as cold dense molecular clouds, star-forming regions and circumstellar envelopes, and will help in the interpretation of the puzzling C6H-/C6H abundance ratios deduced from observations.
Recommended Citation
K. M. Walker et al., "Fine and Hyperfine Collisional Excitation of C₆H by He," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 473, no. 1, pp. 1407 - 1415, Oxford University Press, Jan 2018.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/MNRAS/STX2389
Department(s)
Chemistry
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
Keywords and Phrases
ISM: Molecules; Molecular Data; Molecular Processes; Scattering
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0035-8711; 1365-2966
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2018 Oxford University Press, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2018