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Physical Review A

Nonadiabatic coupling in cold collisions of spin-polarized metastable hydrogen atoms

Robert C. Forrey, A. Dalgarno, Yulian V. Vanne, Alejandro Sáenz, Piotr Froelich

Published Nov 29, 2007• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Previous calculations of low-temperature cross sections for collisions between spin-polarized metastable hydrogen atoms are improved to include nonadiabatic radial and angular coupling at large interatomic separations. The electrostatic dipole-quadrupole interaction produces nonadiabatic radial coupling between $(2s,2p)$ and $(2p,2p)$ states, while the Coriolis interaction produces nonadiabatic angular coupling. Both of these long-range contributions are handled in a space-fixed atomic gauge that is particularly convenient for a spin-polarized system. The improved theoretical results are compared with an existing experiment.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.76.052709

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Previous calculations of low-temperature cross sections for collisions between spin-polarized metastable hydrogen atoms are improved to include nonadiabatic radial and angular coupling at large interatomic separations. The electrostatic dipole-quadrupole interaction produces nonadiabatic radial coupling between (2s,2p)(2s,2p)(2s,2p) and (2p,2p)(2p,2p)(2p,2p) states, while the Coriolis interaction produces nonadiabatic angular coupling. Both of these long-range contributions are handled in a space-fixed atomic gauge that is particularly convenient for a spin-polarized system. The improved theoretical results are compared with an existing experiment.
Cross sections and rate coefficients for collisions of two spin-polarized metastable hydrogen atoms are calculated at low energies and temperatures using complex scaling and Feshbach projection methods for the determination of the molecular potential-energy curves. The inclusion of the Lamb shift and fine-structure splitting of the excited n=2n=2n=2 atoms leads to an attractive van der Waals potential for two 2s1/2{2s}_{1/2}2s1/2​ atoms with an exceptionally large coefficient. The quenching of the metastable atoms is dominated at temperatures below 20 mK by ionization. The calculated values for the total loss rate coefficient at 87 \ensuremath{\mu}K and 230 \ensuremath{\mu}K are within a factor of 2 or 3 of the error bars of recent measurements of metastable loss rate coefficients.
Scattering and ionizing cross sections and rates are calculated for ultracold collisions between metastable helium atoms using a fully quantum-mechanical close-coupled formalism. Homonuclear collisions of the bosonic 4He∗+4He∗^{4}\mathrm{He}^{*}+^{4}\mathrm{He}^{*}4He∗+4He∗ and fermionic 3He∗+3He∗^{3}\mathrm{He}^{*}+^{3}\mathrm{He}^{*}3He∗+3He∗ systems, and heteronuclear collisions of the mixed 3He∗+4He∗^{3}\mathrm{He}^{*}+^{4}\mathrm{He}^{*}3He∗+4He∗ system, are investigated over the temperature range 1 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$ to 1 K. Carefully constructed Born-Oppenheimer molecular potentials are used to describe the electrostatic interaction between the colliding atoms, and complex optical potentials to represent loss through ionization from the ${}^{1,3}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}$ states. Magnetic spin-dipole-mediated transitions from the ${}^{5}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}$ state are included and results reported for spin-polarized and unpolarized systems. Comparisons are made with experimental results, previous semiclassical models, and a perturbed single-channel model.
We have studied hydrogen-hydrogen-alkali three-body systems in the adiabatic hyperspherical representation. For the spin-stretched case, there exists a single XXXH molecular state when XXX is one of the bosonic alkali atoms: 7Li^{7}\mathrm{Li}7Li, 23Na^{23}\mathrm{Na}23Na, 39K^{39}\mathrm{K}39K, 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb, or 133Cs^{133}\mathrm{Cs}133Cs. As a result, the only recombination process is the one that leads to formation of XXXH molecules, $\text{H}+\text{H}+X\ensuremath{\rightarrow}X\text{H}+\text{H}$, and such molecules will be stable against vibrational relaxation. We have calculated the collision rates for recombination and collision-induced dissociation as well as the elastic cross sections for H+XH\text{H}+X\text{H}H+XH collisions up to a temperature of 0.5 K, including the partial wave contributions from ${J}^{\ensuremath{\Pi}}={0}^{+}$ to ${5}^{\ensuremath{-}}$. We have also found that there is just one three-body bound state for such systems for ${J}^{\ensuremath{\Pi}}={0}^{+}$ and no bound states for higher angular momenta.
We recently developed an adiabatic theory for cold molecular collision experiments. In our previous application of this theory (Pawlak, M.; et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2015, 143, 074114), we assumed that during the experiment the collision of an atom with a diatom takes place when the diatom is in the ground rotational state and is located in a plane. In this paper, we present how the variational approach of the adiabatic theory for low-temperature collision experiments can be used for the study a 5D collision between the atom and the diatomic molecule with no limitations on its rotational quantum states and no plane restrictions. Moreover, we show here the dramatic differences in the measured reaction rates of He(2 3 S 1 ) + ortho / para -H 2 → He(1s 2 ) + ortho / para -H 2 + + e – resulting from the anisotropic long-range interactions in the reaction. In collisions of metastable helium with molecular hydrogen in the ground rotational state, the isotropic potential term dominates the dynamics. When the collision is with molecular hydrogen in the first excited rotational state, the nonisotropic interactions play an important role in the dynamics. The agreement of our results with the latest experimental findings ( Klein, A.; et al. Nat. Phys. 2017, 13, 35−38) is very good.