Abstract

We present a new method taking explicitly into account the coupling between rotation and bending of a nonlinear triatomic molecule colliding with an atom. This approach based on a rigid-bender treatment of the triatomic molecule was originally developed for the case of triatomic molecule linear at equilibrium. It is here extended to the case of a colliding bent triatomic molecule at equilibrium and applied to the case of the para-H-2 + H2O inelastic collision using a new H2O-para-H-2 adiabatically reduced 4D potential. The results of the method for purely rotational transitions are compared to those of rigid-rotor calculations while vibrational quenching rates of the first exited bending level are calculated for the first time at the close-coupling level.