Magnetic tuning of ultracold barrierless chemical reactions

Abstract

While attaining external field control of bimolecular chemical reactions has long been a coveted goal of physics and chemistry, the role of hyperfine interactions and dc magnetic fields in achieving such control has remained elusive. We develop an extended coupled-channel statistical theory of barrierless atom-diatom chemical reactions, and apply it to elucidate the effects of magnetic fields and hyperfine interactions on the ultracold chemical reaction Li(${}^2{\text{S}}_{1/2}$) + CaH(${}^2{\Sigma }^{+}$) $\to$ LiH(${}^1{\Sigma }^{+}$) + Ca(${}^1{\text{S}}_0$) on a newly developed set of ab initio potential energy surfaces. We observe large field effects on the reaction cross sections, opening up the possibility of controlling ultracold barrierless chemical reactions by tuning selected hyperfine states of the reactants with an external magnetic field.

4.2 pages plus Supplemental Material

References in corpus (13)

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• Universal model for exoergic bimolecular reactions and inelastic processes
• Synthesis of mixed hypermetallic oxide BaOCa${}^{+}$ from laser-cooled reagents in an atom-ion hybrid trap
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• Statistical product distributions for ultracold reactions in external fields
• Adiabatic Channel Capture Theory Applied to Cold Atom-Molecule Reactions: Li + CaH -> LiH + Ca at 1 K

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Quantum spin state selectivity and magnetic tuning of ultracold chemical reactions of triplet alkali-metal dimers with alkali-metal atoms
• Stereodynamic control of cold rotationally inelastic CO + HD collisions
• 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${}_2$($a^3{\Sigma }_u^{+}$)
• Full-dimensional quantum scattering calculations on ultracold atom-molecule collisions in magnetic fields: The role of molecular vibrations
• Laser cooling of a fermionic molecule
• Nuclear spin relaxation in cold atom-molecule collisions
• Ultracold molecular collisions in magnetic fields: Efficient incorporation of hyperfine structure in the total rotational angular momentum representation
• Magneto-Optical Trapping of a Metal Hydride Molecule
• Ultracold collisions of the lithium monoxide radical
• A model for nuclear spin product-state distributions of ultracold chemical reactions in magnetic fields
• Optimizing Pulsed-Laser Ablation Production of AlCl Molecules for Laser Cooling