This work is devoted to a study of dynamical and collisional processes, governing populations of small bodies in the Solar System. It pays special attention to asteroid families and Jupiter Trojans. Librating around L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Sun-Jupiter-asteroid system, these asteroids are believed to be captured from the trans- Neptunian region during a giant planet system instability about 4 Gy ago. We discovered (back in 2011) there is only one significant collisional family among Trojans, associated with C-type asteroid (3548) Eurybates, i.e., one of the targets for the upcoming 'Lucy' mission. Detailed analysis of new proper resonant orbital elements, colours and albedos, together with statistical significance computations, allowed us to find five more collisional families: Hektor, (9799), Arkesilaos, Ennomos, and (247341). The discovery of the first D-type family associated with (624) Hektor was the most surprising, because it is the most primitive taxonomic type. Using long-term dynamical simulations of synthetic families, evolving by chaotic diffusion, we estimated the ages of the Eurybates and Hektor families, approximately (2.5±1.5) Gy for both. We also studied impact processes by means of the smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH). We simulated cratering events on (624) Hektor, the origin...

Unimolecular reactions based on the Lindemann - Hinchelwood mechanism are important to understanding combustion and atmospheric processes. The main feature of this mechanism is the energy transfer probability distribution function, P(E',E). We have chosen to study P(E',E) through gas phase collisional dynamics probed with IR transient absorption spectroscopy. Post-collision absorption line widths for the pyrazine-N2O system are used to calculate lab frame translational temperatures. The translational temperatures reveal that collisions with large rotational energy transfer also transfer large amounts of translational energy. For J states >47 the relationship is linear indicating a constant impact parameter. Line widths for J=47 through J=59 also showed that there is no out-scattering from these states, in contrast to work performed previously in the Sevy group. The discrepancy between these measurements prompted a complete analysis of the causes of noise in the experimental system. Defective instruments were identified and noise sources localized, including IR diode frequency jitter. Improved experimental techniques and troubleshooting guides are explained for future researchers in the Sevy group.

La compréhension des processus électroniques engendrés au cours des collisions atomiques ou moléculaires est essentielle au niveau fondamental mais aussi en raison des besoins d’informations quantitatives sur ces processus de plusieurs domaines d’application, notamment la physique médicale et la physique des plasmas. Notre objectif est de fournir une meilleure description de ces processus. Dans le cadre de la thèse, nous avons modélisé les processus électroniques ayant lieu au cours des collisions entre des ions nus et l’atome d’hélium, Aq+-He (2≤q≤10). Cette étude est effectuée dans la gamme des énergies intermédiaires (0.25-625 keV/u) en adoptant le modèle semi-classique non perturbatif de close coupling. Un intérêt particulier est porté sur l’étude des processus de simple et de double capture vu leur grande importance dans cette gamme des vitesses. Plus précisément, nous avons analysé la double capture en détail, en séparant celle peuplant les états liés à celle qui concerne les états auto-ionisants. Cette dernière est particulièrement complexe à modéliser car elle nécessite une bonne description des états doublement excités (au-delà des deux premiers seuils d’ionisation dans notre cas), difficile à implémenter dans une approche dépendante du temps non perturbative comme la nôtre. En analysant les sections efficaces de ces deux processus pour l’ensemble des systèmes étudiés, et en les comparant systématiquement aux données expérimentales et théoriques existantes, nous avons pu extraire un comportement général reliant les processus électroniques les plus favorables à la charge et à la vitesse du projectile considérée. / The understanding of the electronic processes occurring during atomic and molecular collisions concerns the fundamental level but also the needs for quantitative information on these processes, requested by several fields of application, in particular medical physics and plasma physics. Our goal is to provide a better description of these processes. In the framework of the thesis, we have modelled the electronic processes taking place during the collisions between bare ions and the helium atom, Aq +-He (2≤q≤10). This study is carried out in the range of intermediate energies (0.25-625 keV/u), adopting the semi-classical non-perturbative close coupling approach. A particular interest is paid to the single and double capture processes because of their great importance in this energy range. More precisely, we have analysed the double capture processes, splitting the contributions of double capture to bound states and to auto-ionizing states. This latter is particularly complex to describe since it requires a good description of doubly-excited states (beyond the two first thresholds in our study), difficult to implement in time-dependent coupled-channel approaches as ours. By analysing the cross sections of these two processes for all the systems studied and comparing them to available experimental and theoretical data, we were able to extract a general behaviour linking the most favourable electronic processes to the projectile charge and velocity.