Quantum state resolved molecular dipolar collisions over four decades of energy
Abstract
Collisions between cold polar molecules represent a fascinating research frontier, but have proven hard to probe experimentally. We report measurements of inelastic cross sections for collisions between NO and ND 3 molecules at energies between 0.1 and 580 cm-1 , with full quantum state resolution. At energies below the 100 cm-1 well depth of the interaction potential, we observed backward glories originating from peculiar U-turn trajectories. At energies below 0.2 cm-1, we observed a breakdown of the Langevin capture model, which we interpreted in terms of a suppressed mutual polarization during the collision, effectively switching off the molecular dipole moments. Scattering calculations based on an ab initio NO-ND3 potential energy surface revealed the crucial role of near-degenerate rotational levels with opposite parity in low-energy dipolar collisions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2302.06866,
title = {Quantum state resolved molecular dipolar collisions over four decades of energy},
author = {Guoqiang Tang and Matthieu Besemer and Stach Kuijpers and Gerrit C. Groenenboom and Ad van der Avoird and Tijs Karman and Sebastiaan Y. T. van de Meerakker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.06866},
year = {2023}
}