Energy transfer between polyatomic molecules. 1. Gateway modes, energy transfer quantities and energy transfer probability density functions in benzene-benzene and Ar-benzene collisions

We report collisional energy transfer, CET, quantities for polyatomic-polyatomic collisions and use excited benzene collisions with cold benzene bath, B-B, as our sample system and compare our results with the CET of excited benzene with Ar bath. We find that the gateway mode for both systems is the out-of-plane modes and that in B-B CET, vibration to vibration, V-V, is the dominant channel. Rotations play a mechanistic role in the CET but the net rotational energy transfer is small compared to V-V. The shape of the down side of the energy transfer probability density function, P(E,E'), is convex for B-B collisions and it becomes less so as the temperature increases. In Ar-B collisions, P(E,E') is concave and it becomes less so as the temperature decreases. We report average vibrational, rotational, and translational energy transferred, , as function of temperature for various initial conditions.