Inelastic transition probabilities by the energy fluctuation model

Abstract

The energy fluctuation model provides a typical expression for transition probabilities in inelastic molecular collisions, based on the definition of both a collision entropy and a density of energy states encountered in these processes. By this model, advances have already been made to improve physical understanding and consistency between classical mechanics results and quantum ones. In this work, we show practically that a semi-classically-calculated probability can always be dealt with in such a way as to result in the corresponding quantum expression. To this purpose, we assume (parametrically-evaluated) prototype functions for the entropy and density of states, and show that their forms are correlated to the energy time-law occurring in a single process. An ergodic-like property of the model is enlightened, a numerical example is provided, and general physical discussion is given step by step in the paper.