English

Observation of the P-wave Shape Resonance

Atomic Physics 2022-10-21 v2 Chemical Physics

Abstract

Partial wave resonances are quasi-bound states that are formed by tunneling through the centrifugal barrier. Such states are important to collisions that deviate from the Langevin limit where direct collision path is suppressed due to quantum symmetry or a potential barrier. In such a case, quantum resonances play a major role in the dynamics at low temperatures where scattering process can be described mainly by the resonance contribution. Here we present the first observation of the lowest-lying partial wave resonance in the Penning ionization collisions between metastable neon and rovibrationally ground state HD molecules. We observe the resonance at an energy of kB×k_B\times22mK taking advantage of the phase space correlation similar to atomic delta kick cooling. We show that the pp-wave resonance position is particularly sensitive to the leading term of the van der Waals interaction. We also measure shape resonance at a higher angular momentum state, l=6l=6, allowing us to disentangle and probe the short and the long parts of the intermolecular interaction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.07716,
  title  = {Observation of the P-wave Shape Resonance},
  author = {Baruch Margulis and Prerna Paliwal and Wojciech Skomorowski and Mariusz Pawlak and Piotr S. Żuchowski and Edvardas Narevicius},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.07716},
  year   = {2022}
}