Fast Heavy Ion Collisions with H 2 Molecules And Young Type Interference

R O Barrachina

Sergei A. Kazantsev, A. G. Petrashen, N. M. Firstova

S F Zhang, X. Ma, D. Fischer +9 more

Young-type interference in the ionization of helium in collisions with hydrogen molecular ions is investigated using a reaction microscope. Fringes are observed in the transverse momentum exchange between the collision partners.

Bas van de Meerakker

Luis Benet, S. Yu. Kun, Qi Wang

We study the effect of phase relaxation on coherent superpositions of rotating clockwise and anticlockwise wave packets in the regime of strongly overlapping resonances of the intermediate complex. Such highly excited deformed complexes may be created in binary collisions of heavy ions, molecules, and atomic clusters. It is shown that phase relaxation leads to a reduction of the interference fringes, thus mimicking the effect of decoherence. This reduction is crucial for the determination of the phase-relaxation width from the data on the excitation function oscillations in heavy-ion collisions and bimolecular chemical reactions. The difference between the effects of phase relaxation and decoherence is discussed.

Deepankar Misra, Henning T. Schmidt, Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson +11 more

We report the first observation of Young-type interference effects in a two-electron transfer process. These effects change strongly as the projectile velocity changes in fast (1.2 and 2.0 MeV) He(2+) + H(2) collisions as manifested in strong variations of the double-electron capture rates with the H(2) orientation. This is consistent with fully quantum mechanical calculations, which ignore sequential electron transfer, and a simple projectile de Broglie wave picture assuming that two-electron transfer probabilities are higher in collisions where the projectile passes close to either one of the H(2) nuclei.