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The Journal of Chemical Physics

On the low energy limits of inelastic molecule–surface scattering

Eric R. Bittner

Published Apr 1, 1994• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The zero energy scattering limit of inelastic molecule–surface scattering is studied within the context of a multiphonon expansion of the molecule–bath wave function. By assuming that at low scattering energies the expansion may be truncated at first order in the phonon operators, we derived a closed form solution to the Lippmann Schwinger equation for the scattering wave function which includes a nonlocal and energy dependent self-energy term which correctly incorporates virtual phonon transitions in the elastic channel. The closure relation results from the use of a discrete spectral (ℒ2) form of the inelastic channel Greens functions. We compute the zero energy limit of these wave functions and discuss the trapping and reflection of cold atoms from ultracold surfaces. Our results indicate that for realistic atom surface interactions the low energy limit of the sticking coefficient, s, can deviate markedly from the expected s∝E1/2 behavior and is shown to approach a constant nonzero limiting value. This trend is consistent with recent experimental work involving the sticking of spin polarized hydrogen atoms on liquid He films.

DOI
10.1063/1.467196

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The zero energy scattering limit of inelastic molecule–surface scattering is studied within the context of a multiphonon expansion of the molecule–bath wave function. By assuming that at low scattering energies the expansion may be truncated at first order in the phonon operators, we derived a closed form solution to the Lippmann Schwinger equation for the scattering wave function which includes a nonlocal and energy dependent self-energy term which correctly incorporates virtual phonon transitions in the elastic channel. The closure relation results from the use of a discrete spectral (ℒ2) form of the inelastic channel Greens functions. We compute the zero energy limit of these wave functions and discuss the trapping and reflection of cold atoms from ultracold surfaces. Our results indicate that for realistic atom surface interactions the low energy limit of the sticking coefficient, s, can deviate markedly from the expected s∝E1/2 behavior and is shown to approach a constant nonzero limiting value. This trend is consistent with recent experimental work involving the sticking of spin polarized hydrogen atoms on liquid He films.
The role of shape resonances and many-body effects on universal quantum sticking of ultracold atoms onto solid surfaces is examined analytically and computationally using an exactly solvable representation of the Dyson equation. We derive the self-energy renormalization of the transition amplitude between an ultracold scattering atom and the bound states on the surface in order to elucidate the role of virtual phonon exchanges in the limiting behavior of the sticking probability. We demonstrate that, to first order in the interactions for finite ranged atom–surface potentials, virtual phonons can only rescale the strength of the atom–surface coupling and do not rescale the range of the coupling. Thus, universal sticking behavior at ultralow energies is to be expected for all finite ranged potentials. We demonstrate that the onset of the universal sticking behavior depends greatly on the position of the shape resonance of the renormalized potential and for sufficiently low energy shape resonances, deviations from the universal s(E)∝√E can occur near these energies. We believe that this accounts for many of the low energy sticking trends observed in the scattering of submillikelvin H atoms from superfluid 4He films.
In paper I (physics/0010068) entitled "The No-sticking Effect in Ultra-cold Collisions", we showed that under very general circumstances, atoms approaching a surface will not stick as its incoming energy approaches zero. This is true of either warm or cold surfaces. Here we explore the transition region from non sticking to sticking as energy is increased. The key to understanding the transition region is the WKB approximation and the nature of its breakdown. Simple rules for understanding the rollover to higher energy, post-threshold behavior, including analytical formulae for some asymptotic forms of the attractive potential are presented. We discuss a practical example of atom-surface pair in various substrate geometries. We also discuss the case of low energy scattering from clusters.
In this work, a system including two neutral atoms confined to an external one-dimensional Morse potential was modelled. The problem can be relevant to cold atom physics, where neutral atoms may be effectively confined in radially tight tubes formed by optical lattices. The atom-atom interaction was considered as a nonlocal separable potential. Analytical expressions for wave-function as well as transition matrix were derived. The contributions of bound states and resonances in the complex energy plane were calculated. For numerical computations, the bound states in a system of argon gas confined in graphite were considered. Since the most important quantity in the low energy quantum scattering problems is “scattering length,” considering various values of Morse parameters, the behavior of this parameter was described versus the reduced energy.
Abstract A hydrogen atom in the ground state scatters an electron with kinetic energy too small for inelastic collisions to occur. The wave function Ψ(r1; r2) of the system has boundary conditions at infinity which must be chosen to allow correctly for the possibilities of both direct and exchange scattering. The expansion Ψ = Σ ψ,(r1)Fy(r2) of the total wave function in y terms of a complete set of hydrogen atom wave functions ψy(r1) includes an integration over the continuous spectrum. It is si own that the integrand contains a singularity. The explicit form of this singularity and its connexion with the boundary conditions are examined in detail. The symmetrized functions Y* may be represented by expansions of the form Σ {ψy(r1) Gy±(r2) ±ψy(r2) y Gy±(r1)}, where the integrand in the continuous spectrum does not involve singularities. Finally, it is shown that because all the states ψy of the hydrogen atom are included in the expansion, the equation satisfied by F1, the coefficient of the ground state, contains a polarization potential which behaves like — a/2r4 for large r and is independent of the velocity of the incident electron.
Abstract Motivated by the recent experimental developments in ultracold molecules and atoms, we propose a simple theoretical model to address the disassociation, reflection, and transmission probability of a one-dimensional cold molecule via quantum scattering. First, we show the Born approximation results in the weak interaction regime. Then, by employing the Lippmann–Schwinger equation, we give the numerical solution and investigate the disassociation’s dependence on the injection momentum and the interaction strengths. We find that the maximum disassociation rate has a limit when increasing the interaction strengths and injection momentum. We expect that our model can be realized in experiments in the near future.
We study the infrared dynamics of low-energy atoms interacting with a sample of suspended graphene at finite temperature. The dynamics exhibits severe infrared divergences order by order in perturbation theory as a result of the singular nature of low-energy flexural phonon emission. Our model can be viewed as a two-channel generalization of the independent boson model with asymmetric atom-phonon coupling. This allows us to take advantage of the exact nonperturbative solution of the independent boson model in the stronger channel while treating the weaker one perturbatively. In the low-energy limit, the exact solution can be viewed as a resummation (exponentiation) of the most divergent diagrams in the perturbative expansion. As a result of this procedure, we obtain the atom's Green function which we use to calculate the atom damping rate, a quantity equal to the quantum sticking rate. A characteristic feature of our results is that the Green's function retains a weak, infrared cutoff dependence that reflects the reduced dimensionality of the problem. As a consequence, we predict a measurable dependence of the sticking rate on graphene sample size. We provide detailed predictions for the sticking rate of atomic hydrogen as a function of temperature and sample size. The resummation yields an enhanced sticking rate relative to the conventional Fermi golden rule result (equivalent to the one-loop atom self-energy), as higher-order processes increase damping at finite temperature.