Theoretical study of the quenching of NH (singlet Delta) molecules via collisions with Rb atoms: preliminary results

Abstract

We examine the quenching reaction Rb (doublet S) + NH (singlet Delta) goes to Rb (doublet P one-half) + NH (ground triplet Sigma minus). This reaction may be utilized to produce ground state NH molecules for studies of ultracold physics or for other purposes, and is interesting in that it involves initial and final states that are nearly degenerate. This near degeneracy is expected to lead to a large reaction rate. We examine this system using ab initio quantum chemistry calculations and scattering calculations, which include spin-orbit effects, and find that the reaction rate is large and, in fact, approaches the quantum mechanical unitarity limit. We discuss the prospects for an experimental examination of this system.

Submitted to Phys Rev A

References in corpus (10)

• Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Molecules
• Magneto-electrostatic trapping of ground state OH molecules
• Magnetic trapping and Zeeman relaxation of imidogen (NH X-triplet-Sigma)
• Ultracold Rb-OH collisions and prospects for sympathetic cooling
• Ultracold atom-molecule collisions and bound states in magnetic fields: tuning zero-energy Feshbach resonances in He-NH (3Sigma-)
• Electrostatic trapping of metastable NH molecules
• Low-energy collisions of NH3 and ND3 with ultracold Rb atoms
• Cold collisions of OH and Rb. I: the free collision
• Magnetic trapping of atomic nitrogen (14^N) and cotrapping of NH (X-triplet-Sigma-)
• The prospects for producing ultracold NH${}_3$ molecules by sympathetic cooling: a survey of interaction potentials

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The prospects of sympathetic cooling of NH molecules with Li atoms
• Multistage Zeeman deceleration of NH $X{}^3{\Sigma }^{-}$ radicals