Gaseous abundances and methane supersaturation in Titan's troposphere

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/cia.pdf

Physical properties of the organic aerosols and clouds on Titan

Compressed gases and liquids containing molecules of Td and D∞h symmetry absorb far-infrared radiation, due to transient dipole moments induced during molecular collisions. In earlier theoretical work on far-infrared absorption by CH4/N2 mixtures, good agreement was obtained between calculated and experimental spectra at low frequencies, but at higher frequencies—from 250 to 650 cm−1—calculated absorption intensities fell significantly below the experimental values. In this work, we focus on an accurate determination of the long-range, collision-induced dipoles of Td⋯D∞h pairs, including two polarization mechanisms not treated in the earlier line shape analysis: dispersion and nonuniformity in the local field gradient acting on the Td molecule. Since these mechanisms produce transitions with ΔJ=±3 or ±4 for CH4 and ΔJ=0 or ±2 for N2, their inclusion is expected to increase the calculated absorption intensities in the high frequency wings for CH4/N2 mixtures. This should improve agreement with the experime...

Long-range, collision-induced dipoles of Td–D∞h molecule pairs: Theory and numerical results for CH4 or CF4 interacting with H2, N2, CO2, or CS2

Line-mixing effects are studied in infrared bands of CH4 perturbed by N2 at various pressures. The effects of temperature are investigated in the ν3 region whereas spectral shapes of the ν2, ν4, and ν3 bands are compared at room temperature. The theoretical approach proposed in preceding papers is used in order to model and analyze the influence of collisions on the spectral shape. All model parameters are now fixed to values determined in the previous studies. Comparisons between measurements and spectra computed with and without the inclusion of line mixing are made. They show that our approach satisfactorily accounts for the effects of temperature, pressure, and of rotational quantum numbers on the absorption by the ν3 band. Furthermore, the effects of collisions on spectra in the ν4 region at room temperature are also correctly calculated. On the other hand, the proposed approach fails in modeling the evolution with increasing pressure of absorption in the spectral range containing the ν2 band. This r...

/pdf/experimental-and-theoretical-study-of-line-mixing-in-methane-2ci8i3fi39.pdf

Experimental and theoretical study of line mixing in methane spectra. IV. Influence of the temperature and of the band

The interaction-induced dipole moment surface of the van der Waals CH4–N2 complex has been calculated for a broad range of intermolecular separations R and configurations in the approximation of the rigid interacting molecules at the MP2 and CCSD(T) levels of theory using the correlation-consistent aug-cc-pVTZ basis set with the basis set superposition error correction The simple model to account for the exchange effects in the range of small overlap of the electron shells of interacting molecules and the induction and dispersion interactions for large R has been suggested This model allows describing the dipole moment of van der Waals complexes in analytical form both for large R, where induction and dispersion have the key role, and for smaller R including whole ranges of their potential wells, where the exchange effects are important The proposed model was tested on a number of configurations of the CH4–N2 complex and was applied for the analytical description of the dipole moment surface for the fa

Dipole moment surface of the van der Waals complex CH4-N2.

The far infrared absorption of a CH4-N2 mixture was measured at 297, 195, and 162 K from 30 to 650/cm. The spectral invariants gamma1 and alpha1, proportional, respectively, to the zeroth and first spectral moments, due to bimolecular collisions between CH4 and N2 were obtained from these data and compared with theoretical values. The theory for collision-induced dipoles between a tetrahedral and a diatomic or symmetrical linear molecule includes contributions not previously considered. Whereas the theoretical values of gamma1 are only somewhat greater than experiment at all temperatures, the theoretical values of alpha1 are significantly lower than the experimental values. From the theoretical spectral moments for the various induced dipole components, the parameters of the BC shape were computed, and theoretical spectra were constructed. Good agreement was obtained at the lower frequencies, but with increasing frequencies the theoretical spectra were increasingly less intense than the experimental spectra. Although the accuracy of the theoretical results may suffer from the lack of a reliable potential function, it does not appear that this high frequency discrepancy can be removed by any conceivable modification in the potential.

A. Buechele

Papers

Collision‐induced absorption in mixtures of symmetrical linear and tetrahedral molecules: Methane–nitrogen