Heavy particle scattering by atoms in an electric field

Rimantas Lazauskas, Jaume Carbonell

I. I. Khvalchenko

Timur V. Tscherbul, Jacek A. Kłos, Łukasz Rajchel +1 more

We present a rigorous study of cold and ultracold collisions of $\mathrm{Yb}\mathrm{F}(^{2}\ensuremath{\Sigma})$ molecules with He atoms in external electric and magnetic fields based on an accurate calculation of the interaction potential surface and quantum theory of atom-molecule scattering. We analyze the mechanisms of collisional depolarization of the electron and nuclear spins of YbF and demonstrate that the rate constants for elastic and inelastic collisions of YbF with He are sensitive to the magnitudes of the applied fields. Collisions of heavy polar molecules like YbF may thus be easily manipulated with external electromagnetic fields. We show that collisional spin relaxation of YbF molecules in rotationally excited states is suppressed by electric fields much more significantly than the spin relaxation in the ground rotational state. We explain this by the influence of electric-field-induced Feshbach resonances, which occur at much lower collision energies when the molecule is rotationally excited. Our results suggest that heavy polar molecules may be amenable to magnetic trapping in a buffer gas of He, which could greatly enhance the sensitivity of spectroscopic experiments to measure the electric dipole moment of the electron.

L. A. Bureyeva, Valerii S. Lisitsa

1. Introduction. Atomic Processes in Astrophysics 2. Radiative Transitions in an Atomic Potential 3. Polarization of Atoms. Polarization Radiation and Light Scattering 4. Atom in a Static Electric Field 5. Atom in a Magnetic Field and Crossed F-B Fields 6. Atom in a Variable Electric Field 7. Atom under Influence of Stochastic Peturbations 8. Relaxation and Decay of Atomic States 9. Excited Hydrogen-Like Atom in Electric Fields of Charged Particles. Foundation of Classical and Quantum Spectral Line Broadening Theory 10. Quasiclassical Theory of Atom - Charge Particle Collisions 11. Collision of the Atom with Atomic Particles in External Fields 12. Atomic Kinetics References Index

JOHN M. COWLEY

Herbert F. Fotso, J. Vicente, James K. Freericks

Time-of-flight images are a common tool in ultracold atomic experiments, employed to determine the quasimomentum distribution of the interacting particles. If one introduces a constant artificial electric field, then the quasimomentum distribution evolves in time as Bloch oscillations are generated in the system and then are damped, showing a complex series of patterns. In different-mass Fermi-Fermi mixtures, these patterns are formed from a frustrated phase separation in momentum space that is driven by Mott physics for large electric fields which stabilize them for long times.