Kinetics of Isotope-Labeled Pathways in the Ozone Forming Recombination Reaction

The ozone layer in Earth’s atmosphere is unique and plays a vital role in the development of life. Studying the mechanism behind ozone formation helps us understand the development of our planet’s atmosphere. We focus here on the anomalous mass-independent isotope effect.1 In 1981, Mauersberger et al.2 performed an experiment using weather balloons, resulting in the discovery of the anomalous isotope effect for ozone formation. Since then, other chemists have continued to investigate the theory behind this phenomenon. To understand the nature of the isotope effect, we must consider all stages of ozone formation. The basic reaction for ozone formation is O + O2→ O3. To further describe ozone’s formation, several theoretical mechanisms have been developed. A commonly used mechanism at the low-pressure regime is the energy transfer (Lindemann) mechanism3 which involves a metastable intermediate state O3*. At the second step of the reaction, energy is transferred from the intermediate state O3* to the bath gas. Metastable intermediate state of O3* is explained by scattering resonance in quantum mechanics. Here, we use the mixed quantum classical approach. The quantum approach is related to consideration of the scattering resonances with their eigenvalues, eigenfunctions, probabilities and resonance widths. The classical approach is related to kinetics of ozone formation including the stabilization step. The relevant parameters are presented and compared with experimental results, specifically the temperature and pressure dependence of rate coefficients and isotope effects

Four Isotope-Labeled Recombination Pathways of Ozone Formation

A theoretical approach is developed for the description of all possible recombination pathways in the ozone forming reaction, without neglecting any process a priori, and without decoupling the individual pathways one from another. These pathways become physically distinct when a rare isotope of oxygen is introduced, such as 18O, which represents a sensitive probe of the ozone forming reaction. Each isotopologue of O3 contains two types of physically distinct entrance channels and two types of physically distinct product wells, creating four recombination pathways. Calculations are done for singly and doubly substituted isotopologues of ozone, eight rate coefficients total. Two pathways for the formation of asymmetric ozone isotopomer exhibit rather different rate coefficients, indicating large isotope effect driven by -difference. Rate coefficient for the formation of symmetric isotopomer of ozone (third pathway) is found to be in between of those two, while the rate of insertion pathway is smaller by two orders of magnitude. These trends are in good agreement with experiments, for both singly and doubly substituted ozone. The total formation rates for asymmetric isotopomers are found to be somewhat larger than those for symmetric isotopomers, but not as much as in the experiment. Overall, the distribution of lifetimes is found to be very similar for the metastable states in symmetric and asymmetric ozone isotopomers

Influence of the Coriolis Effect on the Properties of Scattering Resonances in Symmetric and Asymmetric Isotopomers of Ozone

Scattering resonances above dissociation threshold are computed for four isotopically substituted ozone species: 16O18O16O, 16O16O18O, 18O16O18O and 16O18O18O, using a variational method with accurate treatment of the rotation–vibration coupling terms (Coriolis effect) for all values of the total angular momentum J from 0 to 4. To make these calculations numerically affordable, a new approach was developed which employs one vibrational basis set optimized for a typical rotational excitation (J,Λ), to run coupled rotation–vibration calculations at several desired values of J. In order to quantify the effect of Coriolis coupling, new data are contrasted with those computed using the symmetric-top rotor approximation, where the rotation–vibration coupling terms are neglected. It is found that, overall, the major properties of scattering resonances (such as their lifetimes, the number of these states, and their cumulative partition function Q) are all influenced by the Coriolis effect and this influence grows as the angular momentum J is raised. However, it is found that the four isotopically substituted ozone molecules are affected roughly equally by the Coriolis coupling. When the ratio η of partition functions for asymmetric over symmetric ozone molecules is computed, the Coriolis effect largely cancels, and this cancelation seems to occur for all values of J. Therefore, it does not seem grounded to attribute any appreciable mass-independent symmetry-driven isotopic fractionation to the Coriolis coupling effect

Four Isotope-Labeled Recombination Pathways of Ozone Formation

A theoretical approach is developed for the description of all possible recombination pathways in the ozone forming reaction, without neglecting any process a priori, and without decoupling the individual pathways one from another. These pathways become physically distinct when a rare isotope of oxygen is introduced, such as 18O, which represents a sensitive probe of the ozone forming reaction. Each isotopologue of O3 contains two types of physically distinct entrance channels and two types of physically distinct product wells, creating four recombination pathways. Calculations are done for singly and doubly substituted isotopologues of ozone, eight rate coefficients total. Two pathways for the formation of asymmetric ozone isotopomer exhibit rather different rate coefficients, indicating large isotope effect driven by ΔZPE-difference. Rate coefficient for the formation of symmetric isotopomer of ozone (third pathway) is found to be in between of those two, while the rate of insertion pathway is smaller by two orders of magnitude. These trends are in good agreement with experiments, for both singly and doubly substituted ozone. The total formation rates for asymmetric isotopomers are found to be somewhat larger than those for symmetric isotopomers, but not as much as in the experiment. Overall, the distribution of lifetimes is found to be very similar for the metastable states in symmetric and asymmetric ozone isotopomers