Trajectory study of energy transfer and unimolecular dissociation of highly excited allyl with argon

The influence of rotational excitation on energy transfer in single collisions of allyl with argon and on allyl dissociation is investigated. About 90 000 classical scattering simulations are performed in order to determine collision-induced changes in internal energy and in allyl rotational angular momentum. Dissociation is studied by means of about 50 000 additional trajectories evolved for the isolated allyl under three different conditions: allyl with no angular momentum (J = 0); allyl with the same microcanonically sampled initial conditions used for the collisions (J∗); allyl evolving from the corresponding exit conditions after the collision. The potential energy surface is the sum of an intramolecular potential and an interaction one, and it has already been used in a previous work on allyl-argon scattering (Conte, R.; Houston, P. L.; Bowman, J. M. J. Phys. Chem. A 2013, 117, 14028-14041). Energy transfer data show that increased initial rotation favors, on average, increased relaxation of the excited molecule. The availability of a high-level intramolecular potential energy surface permits us to study the dependence of energy transfer on the type of starting allyl isomer. A turning point analysis is presented, and highly efficient collisions are detected. Collision-induced variations in the allyl rotational angular momentum may be quite large and are found to be distributed according to three regimes. The roles of rotational angular momentum, collision, and type of isomer on allyl unimolecular dissociation are considered by looking at dissociations times, kinetic energies of the fragments, and branching ratios. Generally, rotational angular momentum has a strong influence on the dissociation dynamics, while the single collision and the type of starting isomer are less influential.