Tuning bimolecular chemical reactions by electric fields

Abstract

We develop a theoretical method for solving the quantum mechanical reactive scattering problem in the presence of external fields based on a hyperspherical coordinate description of the reaction complex combined with the total angular momentum representation for collisions in external fields. The method allows us to obtain converged results for the chemical reaction LiF + H -> Li + HF in an electric field. Our calculations demonstrate that, by inducing couplings between states of different total angular momenta, electric fields with magnitudes <150 kV/cm give rise to resonant scattering and a significant modification of the total reaction probabilities, product state distributions and the branching ratios for reactive vs inelastic scattering.

11 pages, 8 figures, including the Supplemental Material

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• Strong dependence of ultracold chemical rates on electric dipole moments
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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Cold molecules: Progress in Quantum Engineering of Chemistry and Quantum Matter
• Bayesian machine learning for quantum molecular dynamics
• Universal Machine Learning for the Response of Atomistic Systems to External Fields
• Shielding ${}^2\Sigma$ ultracold dipolar molecular collisions with electric fields
• Adimensional theory of shielding in ultracold collisions of dipolar rotors
• Complete quantum coherent control of ultracold molecular collisions
• Atom-molecule collisions, spin relaxation, and sympathetic cooling in an ultracold spin-polarized Rb(${}^2\mathrm{S}$)-SrF${(}^2{\Sigma }^{+})$ mixture
• Universal probability distributions of scattering observables in ultracold molecular collisions
• Resonant control of elastic collisions between ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K molecules and ${}^{40}$K atoms
• Geometric Phase Effects in the Ultracold D + HD $\to$ D + HD and D + HD $\leftrightarrow$ H + D${}_2$ Reactions
• Signatures of Non-universal Quantum Dynamics of Ultracold Chemical Reactions of Polar Alkali-dimer Molecules with Alkali-metal Atoms: Li(${}^2$S) +NaLi($a^3{\Sigma }^{+}$) $\to$ Na(${}^2$S) + Li${}_2$($a^3{\Sigma }_u^{+}$)
• Nonrigidity effects -- a missing puzzle piece in the description of low-energy anisotropic molecular collisions
• Nuclear spin relaxation in cold atom-molecule collisions
• Total angular momentum representation for state-to-state quantum scattering of cold molecules in a magnetic field
• Selective quantum Zeno effect of ultracold atom-molecule scattering in dynamic magnetic fields
• Ultracold molecular collisions in magnetic fields: Efficient incorporation of hyperfine structure in the total rotational angular momentum representation
• Purely long-range polar molecules composed of identical lanthanide atoms
• Restricted basis set coupled-channel calculations on atom-molecule collisions in magnetic fields
• Quantum Reactive Scattering of Ultracold Atoms and Molecules: Universality and Chaotic Dynamics
• Rigorous quantum calculations for atom-molecule chemical reactions in electric fields: from single to multiple partial wave regimes