Initial vibrational and rotational energy distributions of hydrogen and deuterium fluoride formed in the reactions of atomic fluorine with hydrogen bromide and deuterium bromide

The reaction of atomic fluorine with deuterium bromide has been studied by the arrested relaxation chemiluminescence method. Further experiments involving the non-deuteriated reaction are also reported. The results confirm that the dynamics of these reactions fall into the same general category as the corresponding ones involving the other hydrogen halides. There is the usual high degree of vibrational energy level population inversion in the product hydrogen fluoride and deuterium fluoride and the mean fractions of available energy entering vibration, rotation and translation are determined as = 0·56, = 0·11, = 0·33 and = 0·61, = 0·11 and = 0·28 for the HBr and DBr reactions respectively. Trajectory calculations have been made in order to determine the LEPS surface most capable of reproducing the experimental energy distributions. Information theoretic analysis has been applied to both vibrational and rotational data to determine the extent of deviation from statistical energy disposal.