THE COLLISION-FREQUENCY AND REACTION-RATE

The collision-frequencies between pairs of particles in a steady state for both smooth rigid elastic and Coulomb interaction are obtained by a uniform method. In addition. the results for smooth rigid elastic interaction are the same as that obtained previously [S. Champman and T. C. Cowling, in The Mathematical Theory of Non-Uniform Gas (Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, 1970), Chap. 5]. A momentum change distribution for collision frequency is obtained. It cannot only be used as an exact means for the description of Coulomb collision frequency but can also be used for calculating reaction rates. In the case of smooth rigid elastic interaction, the reaction rate proved to be of Arrhenius formula [D. H. Charles and G. A. Rayford, Fundamentals of Chemical Reaction Engineering (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979), Chap. 12]. For Coulomb interaction, a formula for the fusion reaction rate between deuterium and tritium as (sigmaupsilon(DT)) = 0.24T-3/2GAMMA(-1, 17.3/T) cm3/sec (with T in keV) is obtained, which is in agreement with the empirical data over a large temperature region (10 keV < T< 1000 keV).