Interactions and low energy collisions between an alkali ion and an alkali atom of different nucleus

Abstract

We study theoretically interaction potentials and low energy collisions between different alkali atoms and alkali ions. Specifically, we consider systems like X + Y${}^{+}$, where X(Y${}^{+})$ is either Li(Cs${}^{+}$) or Cs(Li${}^{+}$), Na(Cs${}^{+}$) or Cs(Na${}^{+}$) and Li(Rb${}^{+}$) or Rb(Li${}^{+}$). We calculate the molecular potentials of the ground and first two excited states of these three systems using pseudopotential method and compare our results with those obtained by others. We derive ground-state scattering wave functions and analyze cold collisional properties of these systems for a wide range of energies. We find that, in order to get convergent results for the total scattering cross sections for energies of the order 1 K, one needs to take into account at least 60 partial waves. Low energy scattering properties calculated in this paper may serve as a precursor for experimental exploration of quantum collisions between an alkali atom and an alkali ion of different nucleus.

7 pages, 6 figures

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• Cold heteronuclear atom-ion collisions
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Cold hybrid ion-atom systems
• Production of NaCa${}^{+}$ molecular ions in the ground state from cold atom-ion mixtures by photoassociation via an intermediate state
• Spectroscopic properties of the molecular ions BeX^+ (X=Na, K, Rb): Forming cold molecular ions from an ion-atom mixture by stimulated Raman adiabatic process
• Charge transfer in ultracold gases via Feshbach resonances
• Structure, spectroscopy and cold collisions of the (SrNa)${}^{+}$ ionic system