Investigation of the thermomagnetic effect and the possibility of applying it to the study of the orientation-dependent interaction of molecules with a surface

Theoretical and experimental results are presented on the role of the thermomagnetic effect in a rarefied molecular gas in the case of variations in the heat flux in the gas which is located between two plates in a magnetic field. The effect is shown to be conditioned by the dependence of the interaction of molecules with the solid surface on the orientation of the molecules. Experiments reveal heat flux fluctuations which are a function of magnetic field strength in N2, CO2 and CO, interacting with a layer of gold deposited on a solid surface. A theory of the thermomagnetic effect is developed, according to which the orientational dependence of the molecular interactions is described by the nonspherical part of the probability of molecular scattering on the surface.