Cross Sections for Planetary Escape

Details Cross Sections for Planetary Escape Cross Sections for Planetary Escape

Oct 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000dps....32.5713t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS Meeting #32, #57.13; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.1110

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Energetic charged-particle bombardment, dissociative recombination and photodissociation processes produce a hot corona and can cause escape on many planetary atmospheres. In describing these processes by Monte Carlo methods many of the critical cross sections are not available in the energy range of interest, a few eV to 1 keV. This is especially the case if one of the targets is a molecule. Earlier we gave results for dissociation of CO2 relevant to Mars (1). Here we present our recent results for elastic collision and collisional dissociation cross sections relevant to Titan, Triton, Europa and the terrestrial planets. We carried out a detailed quantum mechanical calculation for O + O from 1eV to 10eV using all of 18 ground-state potentials and compared the results to simple models based on average potentials (2). For an O thermosphere the total elastic cross section is close to that typically assumed but the escape depths are shown to be larger than those typically used. In addition, we used laboratory data to create semi-empirical pair potentials to calculate collisional dissociation cross sections (3) for N + N2 for use at Titan (4) and for O + O2 for use at Europa (5). The latter have been incorporated into models of those atmospheres. (1) R.E. Johnsn and M. liu, 1998, J. Geophys. Res. 103, 3639-3647 (2) C. Tully and R.E. Johnson PSS submitted to Plant. Sp. Sci. (3) M. Liu, C. Tully, R.E. Johnson PSS to be submitted to Plant. Sp. Sci. (4) V. Shematovich, C. Tully, and R.E. Johnson to be submitted (5) V. Shematovich and R.E. Johnson ASR to be submitted to Ast. Phys. Rev.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Cross Sections for Planetary Escape does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Cross Sections for Planetary Escape, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Cross Sections for Planetary Escape will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-867708