| Abstract: | We examine vibrational relaxation in a one-component diatomic gas, the molecules of which are described by a Morse potential. An expression is obtained for the mean number of quanta of a molecule assuming there exists a sharp boundary which separates vibrational levels into two groups. In each group there dominates either vibrational-quantum exchange processes or energy-exchange processes between the vibrational and translational degrees of freedom. By solving numerically the system of equations for the number of quanta and for the dissociation rate for times larger than the vibrational relaxation time, the dependence of the dissociation constant on the number of quanta is obtained. |
