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Focus: Modeling Ultracold Chemistry

Don Monroe

Published Mar 26, 2010• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The rate at which ultracold molecules react is limited by quantum mechanical effects not seen in ordinary chemistry, according to calculations that agree with recent experiments.

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The dynamics of ultracold quantum gases composed of atoms or molecules with extremely low translational energy E t /k B << 1 millikelvin is dominated by the long-range mutual interactions between particles. Such studies require a detailed modelling of the atom-molecule or molecule-molecule long-range interactions inside the quantum gas with or without the presence of external fields. This paper focuses on two particular aspects relevant to ultracold chemistry: (i) The calculation of rates for photoassociation of a cold atom and a cold molecule to create ultracold excited trimers, based on the knowledge of the long-range interaction between the two species, showing that such rates are encouraging under the density and temperature conditions of a nearly degenerate quantum gas; (ii) The determination of the long-range interactions between two identical polar bialkali molecules in their rovibronic ground level in the presence of an electric field, showing the possibility for the formation of ultracold polar tetramers by stimulated emission.
From a rigorous multichannel quantum-defect formulation of bimolecular processes, we derive a fully quantal and analytic model for the total rate of exoergic bimolecular reactions or inelastic processes that is applicable over a wide range of temperatures including the ultracold regime. The theory establishes a connection between the ultracold chemistry and the regular chemistry by showing that the same theory that gives the quantum threshold behavior agrees with the classical Gorin model at higher temperatures. In between, it predicts that the rates for identical bosonic molecules and distinguishable molecules would first decrease with temperature outside of the Wigner threshold region, before rising after a minimum is reached.
At temperatures close to absolute zero, the molecular reactions and collisions are dominantly governed by quantum mechanics. Remarkable quantum phenomena such as quantum tunneling, quantum threshold behavior, quantum resonances, quantum interference, and quantum statistics are expected to be the main features in ultracold reactions and collisions. Ultracold molecules offer great opportunities and challenges in the study of these intriguing quantum phenomena in molecular processes. In this article, we review the recent progress in the preparation of ultracold molecules and the study of ultracold reactions and collisions using ultracold molecules. We focus on the controlled ultracold chemistry and the scattering resonances at ultralow temperatures. The challenges in understanding the complex ultracold reactions and collisions are also discussed.