Collision-energy dependence of HD(nu'=1,j') product rotational distributions for the H + D2 reaction

Product rotational distributions for the reaction H + D2 --> HD(nu'=1,j') + D have been measured for 16 collision energies in the range of 1.43 < or = E(coll) < or = 2.55 eV. Time-dependent quantum-mechanical calculations agree well in general with the experimental results, but they consistently yield slightly colder distributions. In terms of the average energy channeled into rotation, the differences between experiment and theory amount to approximately 10% for all collision energies sampled. No peculiarity is found for E(coll)=2.55 eV at which the system has sufficient energy to access the first HD2 electronically excited state.