Abstract : The report presents results of experimental and analytical studies of certain energy transfer mechanisms and rates in high-energy gas flows. The immediate application is to generate kinetic data to aid in the prediction of the radiation emitted by hypervelocity vehicle flowfields, radiation from high altitude rocket plumes, how shocks, and shock layers around the vehicles. The present report gives data on a newly discovered vibration-to-electronic (V-E) energy transfer process in CO, creating strong UV signal on the CO 4th Positive Bands. This process has been found to be mediated by small amount of free electrons in the flow. Analogous processes populating radiating excited electronic states of NO, CN, and C2 are also presented. In a complementary phase of the work, production of highly vibrationally excited N2 in cold plasmas and the measurement of vibrational level populations by spontaneous Raman spectroscopy is reported.
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