From Elementary Processes to Modelling of Low-Temperature molecular Plasmas

Ionized gas in low-temperature conditions, are in general characterized by the presence of molecular species, which can strongly affect the system properties and its evolution. In particular, when non-equilibrium conditions exists, the interactions occurring among the particles at a microscopic level, give rise to a complex collisional physics, largely dominated by molecules in different internal quantum states which act as different chemical species. So the modeling of these systems requires the characterization of a plethora of collisional processes, involving molecules, where exchanges of ro-vibronic energies, dissociation, ionization, reactive processes etc., may occur. In this frame, the availability of large sets of cross section data becomes a crucial prerequisite for a realistic simulation of plasma system.