Vibrational relaxation theories and measurements

The rapid progress in research on chemical lasers has led to increased interest in the development of theoretical models of molecular relaxation processes. In this review, recent applications of various theories of nonreactive collisions between diatomic molecules, from semiclassical to quantal, are surveyed in light of experimental data. The intention is to provide the theoretician with a back-ground of those features of the collision problems that require more accurate treatments, and to provide the experimentalist with a spectrum of models available for handling his data.