Journal of Physics Conference Series
Collisions of cold antiprotonic helium atoms and ions with ordinary helium atoms
Grigory Ya. Korenman, S. N. Yudin
Abstract
We consider two types of collisional processes with excited antiprotonic helium systems. (i) Transitions between hyperfine structure sublevels in ( He + ) n LFJ are considered at T ≤ 25 K using the coupled-channels method and a model of scalar and tensor interactions between antiprotonic and ordinary He atoms. Inelastic cross sections for the single and double spin-flip transitions are less than elastic ones by four and seven orders of magnitude, respectively. The cross sections show a resonance behaviour at E ∼ 1–4 K, and therefore the relaxation rates, density shift and broadening of the M1 spectral lines decrease with increasing temperature from 3 to 25 K. (ii) Stark transitions and induced annihilation during collisions of the ( He 2+ ) nl ion with He atoms at E ∼ 10 K are considered for all l -states at n ∼ 30 in the framework of the coupled-channels method. In order to take into account complex energy shifts of the ns and np -states, we introduce modified boundary conditions in these channels. The main contribution to elastic scattering, Stark transitions and induced annihilations during collisions comes from the long-range polarization interaction. Admixtures of ns and np -states to nl -states ( l ≥ 2) during collisions induce the effective annihilation cross sections for the initial l up to 15, but don't affect the Stark cross sections for states with nearly-circular orbits. The calculated values for both types of processes are compatible with recent experimental data.