Rotational relaxation in high temperature jets of nitrogen

This paper investigates the kinetics of rotational level population of molecules in a nitrogen free jet at high values of local translational temperatures. It was found that with decreasing stagnation temperature, the rotational temperature of lower levels approaches to the translational one. This is indicative of a stronger connection of lower rotational levels with tranlational degrees of freedom at low temperatures, i.e. the rotational relaxation rate increases with decreasing temperatures of the lower levels. For upper levels the situation is opposite