Ultracold hydrogen atoms: a versatile coolant to produce ultracold molecules
Atomic Physics
2013-11-20 v2
Abstract
We show theoretically that ultracold hydrogen atoms have very favorable properties for sympathetic cooling of molecules to microkelvin temperatures. We calculate the potential energy surfaces for spin-polarized interactions of H atoms with the prototype molecules NH(triplet-Sigma-) and OH(doublet-Pi) and show that they are shallow (50 to 80 cm-1) and only weakly anisotropic. We carry out quantum collision calculations on H+NH and H+OH and show that the ratio of elastic to inelastic cross sections is high enough to allow sympathetic cooling from temperatures well over 1 K for NH and around 250 mK for OH.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1305.6282,
title = {Ultracold hydrogen atoms: a versatile coolant to produce ultracold molecules},
author = {Maykel L. Gonzalez-Martinez and Jeremy M. Hutson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.6282},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
6 pages, 3 figures