Rotational excitation of hydrogen molecules by collisions with hydrogen atoms

Rate constants for rotational excitation of hydrogen molecules by collisions with hydrogen atoms have been obtained from quantum-mechanical calculations for kinetic temperatures between 100 and 5000 K. These calculations involve the rigid-rotator approximation, but other possible sources of error should be small. The calculations indicate that the early values of Nishimura are larger than accurate rigid-rotator values by about a factor of 20 or more.