Physical Review A
Elastic scattering of two Li7 atoms
Robin Côté, A. Dalgarno, Michael J. Jamieson
Abstract
Interaction potentials for the X $^{1}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}_{\mathrm{g}}^{+}$ and a $^{3}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}_{\mathrm{u}}^{+}$ states of ${\mathrm{Li}}_{2}$ are constructed and used in calculations of the elastic scattering of two $^{7}\mathrm{Li}$ atoms at ultralow temperatures. The extreme sensitivity of the cross sections to the details of the interaction potentials is demonstrated. The calculated elastic and spin-change cross sections are very large, of the order of ${10}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}13}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$ at zero temperature. The predicted scattering length for the triplet state is negative with a value of -17.2${\mathit{a}}_{0}$. Pronounced shape resonances appear at energies of 4.9\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}8}$ a.u. in the singlet scattering and 5.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}7}$ a.u. in the triplet scattering.