Molecular collisions in ultracold atomic gases

Abstract

It has recently become possible to form molecules in ultracold gases of trapped alkali metal atoms. Once formed, the molecules may undergo elastic, inelastic and reactive collisions. Inelastic and reactive collisions are particularly important because they release kinetic energy and eject atoms and molecules from the trap. The theory needed to handle such collisions is presented and recent quantum dynamics calculations on ultracold atom-diatom collisions of spin-polarised Li + Li_2, Na + Na_2 and K + K_2 are described. All these systems have potential energy surfaces on which barrierless atom exchange reactions can occur, and both inelastic and reactive rates are very fast (typically k(inel) > 10^{-10} cm^3 s^-1 in the Wigner regime).

Review article accepted for publication in International Reviews in Physical Chemistry. To be published in Vol. 26, issue 1 (January 2007)

References in corpus (13)

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Cited by in corpus (31)

• Feshbach Resonances in Ultracold Gases
• Cold and Ultracold Molecules: Science, Technology, and Applications
• Quantum-State Controlled Chemical Reactions of Ultracold KRb Molecules
• Reactions of ultracold alkali metal dimers
• Formation and interactions of cold and ultracold molecules: new challenges for interdisciplinary physics
• The hyperfine energy levels of alkali metal dimers: ground-state polar molecules in electric and magnetic fields
• Strong dependence of ultracold chemical rates on electric dipole moments
• Universal ultracold collision rates for polar molecules of two alkali-metal atoms
• Dispersion interactions and reactive collisions of ultracold polar molecules
• Interactions and dynamics in Li + Li_2 ultracold collisions
• Quantum calculations of H2-H2 collisions: from ultracold to thermal energies
• Vibrational energy transfer in ultracold molecule - molecule collisions
• Low-energy collisions of NH3 and ND3 with ultracold Rb atoms
• Van der Waals coefficients for systems with ultracold polar alkali-metal molecules
• The prospects for producing ultracold NH${}_3$ molecules by sympathetic cooling: a survey of interaction potentials
• The hyperfine energy levels of alkali metal dimers: ground-state homonuclear molecules in magnetic fields
• Feshbach resonances in ultracold atom-molecule collisions
• Formation of molecular oxygen in ultracold O + OH reaction
• Cold atomic and molecular collisions: approaching the universal loss regime
• Formation of deeply bound molecules via chainwise adiabatic passage
• Universal probability distributions of scattering observables in ultracold molecular collisions
• Quantum Defect Theory for Cold Chemistry with Product Quantum State Resolution
• 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${}_2$($a^3{\Sigma }_u^{+}$)
• Importance of rotationally inelastic processes in low-energy Penning ionization of CHF${}_3$
• Core repulsion effects in alkali trimers
• Ultracold collisions of molecules
• Ultracold collisions between two light indistinguishable diatomic molecules: elastic and rotational energy transfer in HD+HD
• Temperature-dependent rotationally inelastic collisions of OH- and He
• Resonances at very low temperature for the reaction D${}_2$+H
• Product-state distribution after isotopic substitution in ultracold atom-molecule collisions
• Effect of nuclear spin symmetry in cold and ultracold reactions: D + para/ortho-H${}_2$