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
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.