Bimolecular gas-phase reactions in the Kramers theory of chemical kinetics

An expression for the rate constant is obtained for a bimolecular gas−phase reaction via an extended version of the Kramers theory of chemical kinetics. The multicomponent Fokker–Planck equation is transformed into a suitable set of relative coordinates that facilitated the derivation. The derived expression for the rate constant shows explicitly how the rate of reaction depends on the potential energy of interaction between the reactants, the temperature of the system, the friction constant of the surrounding molecules of the heat bath, and the masses of the reactants.