15min:

BRADLEY F. PARSONS AND DAVID W. CHANDLER, Combustion Research Facility, Sandia National Laboratory, 7011 East Ave., Livermore, CA 94550.

We have investigated the elastic and inelastic scattering in the Cl + D₂ system as a probe of the coupling between Cl (²P_3/2) + D₂ potential energy surface and the Cl* (²P_1/2) + D₂ 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* (²P_1/2) channel at a collision energy of ~1700 cm^-1. Collisions between Cl (²P_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 images show no evidence of such spin-orbit changing collisions in the Cl + D₂ system and allow for an estimate of the total cross section for such collisions.