“…An exact population distribution of particles corresponding to different quantum energy states can be obtained by accounting for all state-tostate collisions between atoms, molecules, and electrons, and the emission and absorption of photons. The availability of first-principles based ab-initio rate data [12,13,14,15,16,17], characterizing microscopic interactions of colliding particles, for different systems like N 2 -N 2 , CO -O, and CO 2 -M, provides an unprecedented level of physical realism in describing the non-equilibrium state of a gas mixture. But in reality, computing the population of each individual energy state for even the simplest flow problem would be unfeasible, owing to the large number of excited states and excitation pathways in a gas.…”