Vibrational relaxation of SF6 by the noble gases as measured by CO2-laser light attenuation in the presence of radial density profiles Original Research Article

Attenuation measurements of infrared radiation from a TEA CO2 laser by mixtures of SF6 with He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe coupled with calculations of multiple photon absorption in the presence of Gaussian radial density profiles of excited SF6 allows an estimate to be made of the relaxation rate coefficients by noble gases in the dense region of the vibrational manifold. Comparison with literature data in the sparse region shows that all experimental values from different sources can be correlated. Available theoretical calculations in the dense region predict relaxation rates for He which agree with the present study but those for Ar and Xe are largely overestimated.