Collapsing sphere’s interaction rates (collisional, absorption, and stimulated emission as well as spontaneous emission) and relative alignment (radiative and quantum state) as a function of the radius for (a) the J = 2 level and J = 2 − 1 transition and (b) the J = 3 level and J = 3 − 2 transition. The interaction rates should be read from the left axis, the relative alignment from the right axis.