Spectral moment virial expansion

For the spectral moments, Eqs. 3.4-3.6, it has long been known that virial expansions exist [400, 402],... 

The coefficients M k) describe the (i + k)-body contribution involving i atoms of species 1 and k atoms of 2. At not too high densities, the virial expansion of spectral moments provides a sound basis for the study of the spectroscopic three-body (and possibly higher) effects. We note that theoretically terms like M 30 gj and M g should be included in the expansion, Eq. 3.9. These correspond to homonuclear three-body contributions which, however, were experimentally shown to be insignificant in the rare gases and are omitted, see p. 58 for details. 

It has been known since the early days of collision-induced absorption that spectral moments may be represented in the form of a virial expansion, with the coefficients of the Nth power of density, qn, representing the N-body contributions [402, 400], The coefficients of qn for N = 2 and 3 have been expressed in terms of the induced dipole and interaction potential surfaces. The measurement of the variation of spectral moments with density is, therefore, of interest for the two-body, three-body, etc., induced dipole components. 

We start with the basic relationships ( Ansatz ) of collision-induced spectra (Section 5.1). Next we consider spectral moments and their virial expansions (Section 5.2) two- and three-body moments of low order will be discussed in some detail. An analogous virial expansion of the line shape follows (Section 5.3). Quantum and classical computations of binary line shapes are presented in Sections 5.4 and 5.5, which are followed by a discussion of the symmetry of the spectral profiles (Section 5.6). Many-body effects on line shape are discussed in Sections 5.7 and 5.8, particularly the intercollisional dip. We conclude this Chapter with a brief discussion of model line shapes (Section 5.10). 

Collision-induced absorption takes place by /c-body complexes of atoms, with k = 2,3,... Each of the resulting spectral components may perhaps be expected to show a characteristic variation ( Qk) with gas density q. It is, therefore, of interest to consider virial expansions of spectral moments of binary mixtures of monatomic gases, i.e., an expansion of the observed absorption in terms of powers of gas density [314], Van Kranendonk and associates [401, 403, 314] have argued that the virial expansion of the spectral moments is possible, because the induced dipole moments are short-ranged functions of the intermolecular separations, R, which decrease faster than R 3. We label the two components of a monatomic mixture a and b, and the atoms of species a and b are labeled 1, 2, N and 1, 2, N, respectively. A set of fc-body, irreducible dipole functions U 2, Us,..., Uk, is introduced (as in Eqs. 4.46), according to... 

Spectral moments may be computed from expressions such as Eqs. 5.15 or 5.16. Furthermore, the theory of virial expansions of the spectral moments has shown that we may consider two- and three-body systems, without regard to the actual number of atoms contained in a sample if gas densities are not too high. Near the low-density limit, if mixtures of non-polar gases well above the liquefaction point are considered, a nearly pure binary spectrum may be expected (except near zero frequencies, where the intercollisional process generates a relatively sharp absorption dip due to many-body interactions.) In this subsection, we will sketch the computations necessary for the actual evaluation of the binary moments of low order, especially Eqs. 5.19 and 5.25, along with some higher moments. 

For some time it has been known that the spectral moments, which are static properties of the absorption spectra, may be written as a virial expansion in powers of density, q", so that the nth virial coefficient describes the n-body contributions (n = 2, 3. ..) [400]. That dynamical properties like the spectral density, J co), may also be expanded in terms of powers of density has been tacitly assumed by a number of authors who have reported low-density absorption spectra as a sum of two components proportional to q2 and q3, respectively [100, 99, 140]. It has recently been shown by Moraldi (1990) that the spectral components proportional to q2 and q3 may indeed be related to the two- and three-body dynamical processes, provided a condition on time is satisfied [318, 297]. The proof resorts to an extension of the static pair and triplet distribution functions to describe the time evolution of the initial configurations these permit an expansion in terms of powers of density that is analogous to that of the static distribution functions [135],... 

Summarizing, it may be said that virial expansions of spectral line shapes of induced spectra exist for frequencies much greater than the reciprocal mean free time between collisions. The coefficients of the density squared and density cubed terms represent the effects of purely binary and ternary collisions, respectively. At the present time, computations of the spectral component do not exist except in the form of the spectral moments see the previous Section for details. 

At higher densities the shapes of most CILS spectra vary with density as it had been noticed since the first experimental studies [307, 308]. This fact reveals the presence of three-body and possibly higher CILS components. The onset of discernible many-body spectral components is best dealt with in the form of a virial expansion of the spectral moments [208,209,326] that at least in principle permits the separation of the binary, ternary, and so on spectral... 

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