Nitrogen-broadened lineshapes in the oxygen A-band: Experimental results and theoretical calculations

The line broadening and shift coefficients for the A-band of oxygen self-perturbed and perturbed by N2 are modeled using semiclassical calculations based on the Robert-Bonamy formalism and two intermolecular potentials. These potentials involve electrostatic contributions including the hexadecapole moment of the molecules and (a) a simple dispersion contribution with one adjustable parameter to fit the broadening coefficients or (b) the atom-atom Lennard-Jones model without such adjustable parameters. The first potential leads to very weak broadening coefficients for high J transitions whereas the second potential gives much more improved results at medium and large J values, in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. For the line shifts which mainly arise in our calculation from the electronic state dependence of the isotropic potential, their general trends with increasing J values can be well predicted, especially from the first potential. From the theoretical results, we have derived air-broadening and air-induced shift coefficients with an agreement comparable to that obtained for O2-O2 and O2-N2.