Depolarized rayleigh light scattering in gaseous systems

A multilevel description of depolarized Rayleigh (DPR) light scattering in gases is presented from the point of view of kinetic theory using the linearized Waldmann-Snider kinetic equation as a starting point. Connections between the present description and earlier work are made. A multilevel calculation of the collision broadening of the DPR line for HD infinitely dilute in He is given using both distorted-wave Born approximation results and full close-coupled results for the transformed Shafer-Gordon potential for H2-He. Various approximations to the full multilevel description are tested and compared for this system.