The collisional energy transfer between the D ¹Π and d ³Π states of the NaK dimer induced by argon buffer gas H. Zhiwei et al.: Appl. Phys. B 66, 471 (1998)

Abstract.

It is shown in this Comment that the method proposed by Zhiwei et al. to extract cross sections for collisional energy transfer between molecular states mediated by argon atoms, is neither correct nor suitable, as it fails to reproduce the molecular behaviour they observe. An alternative model based on a consecutive scheme is put forward, and it is shown that a minimal assumption of one intermediate collisionally activated step is enough to satisfactorily reproduce the observations by Zhiwei et al. However, the extracted parameters are functions of the involved rate constants that are too complex to leave any hope of attaining information on the desired cross sections from them by just varying the argon buffer gas pressure, as done by Zhiwei et al.