Photoassociation of a cold atom-molecule pair: long-range quadrupole-quadrupole interactions

Abstract

The general formalism of the multipolar expansion of electrostatic interactions is applied to the calculation the potential energy between an excited atom (without fine structure) and a ground state diatomic molecule at large separations. Both partners exhibit a permanent quadrupole moment, so that their mutual quadrupole-quadrupole long-range interaction is attractive enough to bind trimers. Numerical results are given for an excited Cs(6P) atom and a ground state Cs2 molecule. The prospects for achieving photoassociation of a cold atom/dimer pair is thus discussed and found promising. The formalism can be easily generalized to the long-range interaction between molecules to investigate the formation of cold tetramers.

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• Photoassociation of a cold atom-molecule pair II: second order perturbation approach
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• Triatomic Photoassociation in an Ultracold Atom-Molecule Collision
• Ultracold atom-dimer long-range interactions beyond the $1/R^n$ expansion
• $C_6$ coefficients for interacting Rydberg atoms and alkali-metal dimers
• Calculations of long-range three-body interactions for Li($2{}^{2}S$)-Li($2{}^{2}S$)-Li($2{}^{2}P$)
• Long-range additive and nonadditive potentials in a hybrid system: Ground state atom, excited state atom, and ion