Potential surface crossing in classical trajectory calculations: Application to collision-induced predissociation in electronically excited I₂

Classical trajectory calculations of inelastic collisions involving electronically excited iodine molecules with rare-gas atoms have been extended to include the effects of potential surface crossing. Adiabatic potential surfaces were generated assuming an r^-6 dependence of the energy splitting on the molecule-atom distance. Nonadiabatic transition probabilities were calculated using the Landau-Zener formula. The reduced-mass and final-state dependence of the calculated induced predissociation probabilities are in good agreement both with experiment and with earlier optical-model calculations.