Quantum state resolved molecular dipolar collisions over four decades of energy

Abstract

Collisions between cold polar molecules represent a fascinating research frontier, but have proven hard to probe experimentally. We report measurements of inelastic cross sections for collisions between NO and ND 3 molecules at energies between 0.1 and 580 cm-1 , with full quantum state resolution. At energies below the 100 cm-1 well depth of the interaction potential, we observed backward glories originating from peculiar U-turn trajectories. At energies below 0.2 cm-1, we observed a breakdown of the Langevin capture model, which we interpreted in terms of a suppressed mutual polarization during the collision, effectively switching off the molecular dipole moments. Scattering calculations based on an ab initio NO-ND3 potential energy surface revealed the crucial role of near-degenerate rotational levels with opposite parity in low-energy dipolar collisions.

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Quantum state resolved molecular dipolar collisions over four decades of energy
• Ultracold field-linked tetratomic molecules
• Three-Body Recombination of Ultracold Microwave-Shielded Polar Molecules
• Coherence of Symmetry-Protected Rotational Qubits in Cold Polyatomic Molecules
• Feshbach Resonances in Cold Collisions: Benchmarking State of the Art ab initio Potential Energy Surfaces
• Imaging Resonance Effects in C + H${}_2$ Collisions using a Zeeman Decelerator
• A novel method to determine the phase-space distribution of a pulsed molecular beam
• Rigorous quantum calculations for atom-molecule chemical reactions in electric fields: from single to multiple partial wave regimes
• Highly spin-polarized molecules via collisional microwave pumping
• Merging Two Molecular Beams of ND${}_3$ up to the Liouville Limit
• A quadratic-scaling algorithm with guaranteed convergence for quantum coupled-channel calculations