Statistical product distributions for ultracold reactions in external fields

Abstract

The main limitation of most ultracold chemistry studies to date is the lack of an analysis of reaction products. Here, we discuss the first generally tractable, rigorous theoretical framework for computing statistical product-state distributions for ultracold reactions in external fields. We show that fields have two main effects on the products of a statistical reaction, by: (1) modifying the product energy levels thus potentially reshaping the product distributions; and/or (2) adding or removing product states by changing the reaction exothermicity. By analyzing these effects and the strength of the formalism to distinguish between different reaction mechanisms in benchmark reactions involving ${}^{40}$K and ${}^{87}$Rb species, we argue that statistical predictions will help understanding product formation and control, and lead developments to realize the full potential of ultracold chemistry.

8 pages, 4 figures. Version 2 expands the theory section and the discussion of the results presented in version 1

References in corpus (8)

• Reactions of ultracold alkali metal dimers
• The hyperfine energy levels of alkali metal dimers: ground-state polar molecules in electric and magnetic fields
• Strong dependence of ultracold chemical rates on electric dipole moments
• Dynamics of gas phase Ne${}^{\ast }$ + NH${}_3$ and Ne${}^{\ast }$ + ND${}_3$ Penning ionization at low temperatures
• Universal model for exoergic bimolecular reactions and inelastic processes
• Electric field suppression of ultracold confined chemical rates
• Van der Waals coefficients for systems with ultracold polar alkali-metal molecules
• Quantum Langevin model for exoergic ion-molecule reactions and inelastic processes

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Collisions of ultracold ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules with controlled chemical reactivities
• Bimolecular chemistry in the ultracold regime
• Adimensional theory of shielding in ultracold collisions of dipolar rotors
• Beyond universality: parametrizing ultracold complex-mediated reactions using statistical assumptions