On the connection between incubation and relaxation times in thermal unimolecular reactions

Limiting low-pressure rate constant for the stepladder model of a thermal unimolecular reaction

“…As a beginning, we do this here for the stepladder model of a unimolecular reaction at the low-pressure limit. To the same degree of approximation as yo is approximated by x(O), an excellent approximation Tin, to (4,11) is given by where n(0) is the starting distribution, taken to be 1 , 0, 0, ... for a shock-wave heating from a low starting temperature. Straightforward substitution of [6] into 171 yields This results leads to two conclusions.…”