Signatures of Non-universal Quantum Dynamics of Ultracold Chemical Reactions of Polar Alkali-dimer Molecules with Alkali-metal Atoms: Li($^2$S) +NaLi($a^3Σ^+$) $\to$ Na($^2$S) + Li$_2$($a^3Σ_u^+$)

Masato Morita; Brian K. Kendrick; Jacek Kłos; Svetlana Kotochigova; Paul Brumer; Timur V. Tscherbul

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00159

paper

Signatures of Non-universal Quantum Dynamics of Ultracold Chemical Reactions of Polar Alkali-dimer Molecules with Alkali-metal Atoms: Li( $^{2}$ S) +NaLi( $a^{3} Σ^{+}$ ) $\to$ Na( $^{2}$ S) + Li $_{2}$ ( $a^{3} Σ_{u}^{+}$ )

arXiv:2301.08208 · doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00159

Abstract

Ultracold chemical reactions of weakly bound triplet-state alkali-metal dimer molecules have recently attracted much experimental interest. We perform rigorous quantum scattering calculations with a new $ab ini t i o$ potential energy surface to explore the chemical reaction of spin-polarized NaLi( $a^{3} Σ^{+}$ ) and Li( $^{2}$ S) to form Li $_{2}$ ( $a^{3} Σ_{u}^{+}$ ) and Na( $^{2}$ S). The reaction is exothermic, and proceeds readily at ultralow temperatures. Significantly, we observe strong sensitivity of the total reaction rate to small variations of the three-body part of the Li $_{2}$ Na interaction at short range, which we attribute to a relatively small number of open Li $_{2}$ ( $a^{3} Σ_{u}^{+}$ ) product channels populated in the reaction. This provides the first signature of highly non-universal dynamics seen in rigorous quantum reactive scattering calculations of an ultracold exothermic insertion reaction involving a polar alkali-dimer molecule, opening up the possibility of probing microscopic interactions in atom+molecule collision complexes via ultracold reactive scattering experiments.

26 pages, 5 figures (Supporting information: 12 pages, 5 figures)

Signatures of Non-universal Quantum Dynamics of Ultracold Chemical Reactions of Polar Alkali-dimer Molecules with Alkali-metal Atoms: Li( $^{2}$ S) +NaLi( $a^{3} Σ^{+}$ ) $\to$ Na( $^{2}$ S) + Li $_{2}$ ( $a^{3} Σ_{u}^{+}$ )

Abstract

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Signatures of Non-universal Quantum Dynamics of Ultracold Chemical Reactions of Polar Alkali-dimer Molecules with Alkali-metal Atoms: Li(2S) +NaLi(a3Σ+) → Na(2S) + Li2​(a3Σu+​)

Abstract

References in corpus (17)

Cited by in corpus (6)

Signatures of Non-universal Quantum Dynamics of Ultracold Chemical Reactions of Polar Alkali-dimer Molecules with Alkali-metal Atoms: Li( $^{2}$ S) +NaLi( $a^{3} Σ^{+}$ ) $\to$ Na( $^{2}$ S) + Li $_{2}$ ( $a^{3} Σ_{u}^{+}$ )