English

When diffraction rules the stereodynamics of rotationally inelastic collisions

Chemical Physics 2010-04-26 v2 Atomic and Molecular Clusters Atomic Physics

Abstract

Following upon our recent work on vector correlations in the Ar-NO collisions [PCCP 12, 1038 (2010)], we compare model results with close-coupling calculations for a range of channels and collision energies for the He-NO system. The striking agreement between the model and exact polarization moments indicates that the stereodynamics of rotationally inelastic atom-molecule collisions at thermal energies is governed by diffraction of matter waves from a two-dimensional repulsive core of the atom-molecule potential. Furthermore, the model polarization moments characterizing the He-NO, He-O2_2, He-OH, and He-CaH stereodynamics are found to coalesce into a single, distinctive pattern, which can serve as a "fingerprint" to identify diffraction-driven stereodynamics in future work.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1002.1572,
  title  = {When diffraction rules the stereodynamics of rotationally inelastic collisions},
  author = {Mikhail Lemeshko and Pablo G. Jambrina and Marcelo P. de Miranda and Bretislav Friedrich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.1572},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:44:30.218Z