Investigation of the kinetic processes occurring in the atmospheric gases and low temperature plasmas of such gases is of great interest for numerous areas of modern physics and chemistry. These include discharge and laser physics, physics of the ionosphere, chemistry and optics of the atmosphere, laser and plasma chemistry, and nonequilibrium gas dynamics. Further, nonequilibrium gaseous media and low temperature plasmas formed from N2, 02, or N2-02 mixtures are rich in active components such as 0, N, and H atoms and ex cited metastable species, which fostered the utilization of such nonequilibrium systems in a variety of new technologies. At present, several monographs devoted to the analysis of kinetic pro cesses in molecular gases and plasmas are available in the literature. How ever, most of these works deal only with general physical-chemical kinetic aspects, and do not provide an analysis of basic kinetic theory and detailed investigation of kinetic processes in N2, 02 and their mixtures. A monograph devoted to such a thorough analysis for the atmospheric gases is still lacking in the literature. The present book was written to fill in this gap. The book can be considered as a natural development of two former mono graphs, Non-Equilibrium Vibrotional Kinetics (ed. by M. Capitelli, Sprin ger-Verlag 1986) and Kinetic Processes in Gases and Lasers (B. Gordiets, A.I. Osipov, and L.A. Shelepin, Gordon and Breach 1988).
