Ab Initio Simulation of Transport Properties in Rb–CH4 and Cs–CH4 Laser Media

The pair interaction potentials of the weakly bound Rb–CH4 and Cs–CH4 systems, which are active media of alkali metal vapor lasers with broadband diode or excimer laser pumping, were calculated by the ab initio method. The electronic problem was solved by the coupled-cluster method in the CCSD(T) version including the basis set superposition error and extrapolation to an infinite basis set. The obtained pointwise ab initio potentials were approximated by the analytical functions based on the orthogonal Chebyshev polynomial expansion with correct asymptotic behavior at the dissociation limit and then used within the framework of the molecular kinetic theory of rarefied gases to evaluate the reduced collision integrals and mutual diffusion coefficients.