EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF LOW-ENERGY CO + H2 INELASTIC COLLISIONS

Carbon monoxide is one of the most abundant components in many interstellar media and modeling its spectra requires knowledge of rate coefficients for the rotational (de-)excitation by collision with the dominant species in molecular regions, H{sub 2}. In this Letter, we report on experimental observation of resonances in the collisional excitation of CO by para- and ortho-H{sub 2} at low collision energies characteristic of cold molecular clouds (down to a few Kelvin). Our experimental integral cross sections are compared to the results of new quantum mechanical scattering calculations performed using the highly accurate ab initio potential energy surface of Jankowski et al. Since the scattering calculations are very sensitive to the accuracy of the potential, especially when quantum resonances are involved, the quality of the agreement between theory and experiment reinforces the confidence in the observables derived from this potential energy surface, such as collisional rate coefficients calculated in the 1-20 K range.