Rotational Transitions of CO+Induced by Atomic Hydrogen

The CO+ molecular ion has been observed in photon-dominated regions. Recent modeling has not been able to explain the abundances of CO+ in these regions. The most abundant collision partners are believed to be hydrogen atoms, hydrogen molecules, and electrons. The reactions of these species with CO+ have been studied previously and found to be fast. The only inelastic processes studied before were collisions of CO+ with electrons. Here we investigate the inelastic collisions of CO+ with hydrogen atoms. We argue that this can be done on the lowest triplet electronic state. This implies that CO+ ions, in a hydrogen atom dominated surrounding, experiences a few inelastic collisions before reac…