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Physical Review Letters

Two-Center Double-Capture Interference in Fast He2++H2 Collisions

Deepankar Misra, Henning T. Schmidt, Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson, D. Fischer, N. Haag, H. A. B. Johansson, A. Källberg, Bennaceur Najjari, P. Reinhed, R. Schuch, Markus S Schöffler, A. Simonsson, Alexander B Voitkiv, H. Cederquist

Published Apr 15, 2009• 42 citations

Abstract

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.

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.102.153201

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Phases of quantum transition amplitudes contain very important information about physical processes. However, as a rule, they may not be accessed experimentally. This is, in particular, the case when collisions of ions and atoms are studied. In this rapid communication, we explore double-electron capture in collisions of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ particles with CO molecules. Regarding the atomic cores of the molecule as two ``slits,'' we show that atomic ``double-slit'' interference can be exploited to experimentally extract information about phases of the projectile scattering on the cores.

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