NAISS
SUPR
NAISS Projects
SUPR
Collisions in astrophysical environments
Dnr:

NAISS 2025/5-647

Type:

NAISS Medium Compute

Principal Investigator:

Paul Barklem

Affiliation:

Uppsala universitet

Start Date:

2025-11-26

End Date:

2026-06-01

Primary Classification:

10407: Theoretical Chemistry

Allocation

Abstract

Collisions in astrophysical environment are one of the fundamental processes. These processes affect the absorbing and emitting spectral lines of atoms, ions, and molecules, thus playing a significant role in the analysis of stellar spectra of the astrophysical environment. The detailed calculations of these inelastic collision processes involve intricate atomic or molecular structure calculations to generate wave functions and potential energies needed for performing effective dynamics calculations. These calculations are very complex and difficult to proceed with. Often, these inelastic processes occur through non-adiabatic interactions, which result in the breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. In such cases, the dynamics evolve on coupled potential energy surfaces, imposing theoretically and computationally challenging tasks. Here, in this project, we will use quantum chemistry software MOLPRO to carry out the electronic structure calculations and the corresponding couplings. Further, we will perform quantum scattering calculations for the dynamics study to get the cross-sections and rates of the collision processes, which will be applied to model the astrophysical spectra in supernova.