A Self-Consistent Calculation of the Dissociation of Oxygen in the Upper Atmosphere. II. Three-Body Recombinations
Phys. Rev. 91, 1408 – Published 15 September, 1953
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.91.1408
Abstract
The dissociation region of oxygen molecules is treated in the same "self-consistent" manner described in previous papers, except that now the densities of atomic and molecular oxygen have been calculated as functions of the altitude, on the assumption that the main recombination process between oxygen atoms is a three-body nonradiative process. The result of the present work indicates that dissociation occurs at an altitute about 5 km higher than the corresponding previous calculation. Furthermore, the region of dissociation is broader than in the previous model. The maximum atomic density is 0.5 to 1×/.