Determination of the He-He, Ne-Ne, Ar-Ar, and H${}_2$ interaction potential by wave function imaging

Abstract

We report on a direct method to measure the internuclear potential energy curve of diatomic systems. A COLTRIMS reaction microscope was used to measure the squares of the vibrational wave functions of H${}_2$, He${}_2$, Ne${}_2$, and Ar${}_2$. The Schrödinger equation relates the curvature of the wave function to the potential V(R) and therefore offers a simple but elegant way to extract the shape of the potential.

arXiv comment15 pages with 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Observation of the Efimov state of the helium trimer
• Imaging the He${}_2$ quantum halo state using a free electron laser
• Schrödinger equation solved for the hydrogen molecule with unprecedented accuracy
• Precise and accurate measurements of strong-field photoionisation and a transferrable laser intensity calibration standard

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Measuring charge distribution of molecular cations by atomic Coulomb probe microscope