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Long-range interactions between polar bialkali ground-state molecules in arbitrary vibrational levels

Atomic Physics 2015-02-20 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We have calculated the isotropic C_6C\_6 coefficients characterizing the long-range van der Waals interaction between two identical heteronuclear alkali-metal diatomic molecules in the same arbitrary vibrational level of their ground electronic state X1Σ+X^1\Sigma^+. We consider the ten species made up of 7^7Li, 23^{23}Na, 39^{39}K, 87^{87}Rb and 133^{133}Cs. Following our previous work [M.~Lepers \textit{et.~al.}, Phys.~Rev.~A \textbf{88}, 032709 (2013)] we use the sum-over-state formula inherent to the second-order perturbation theory, composed of the contributions from the transitions within the ground state levels, from the transition between ground-state and excited state levels, and from a crossed term. These calculations involve a combination of experimental and quantum-chemical data for potential energy curves and transition dipole moments. We also investigate the case where the two molecules are in different vibrational levels and we show that the Moelwyn-Hughes approximation is valid provided that it is applied for each of the three contributions to the sum-over-state formula. Our results are particularly relevant in the context of inelastic and reactive collisions between ultracold bialkali molecules, in deeply bound or in Feshbach levels.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.05636,
  title  = {Long-range interactions between polar bialkali ground-state molecules in arbitrary vibrational levels},
  author = {R. Vexiau and M. Lepers and M. Aymar and N. Bouloufa-Maafa and O. Dulieu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.05636},
  year   = {2015}
}
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