Molecular vibration in cold collision theory

Abstract

Cold collisions of ground state oxygen molecules with Helium have been investigated in a wide range of cold collision energies (from 1 $\mu$K up to 10 K) treating the oxygen molecule first as a rigid rotor and then introducing the vibrational degree of freedom. The comparison between the two models shows that at low energies the rigid rotor approximation is very accurate and able to describe all the dynamical features of the system. The comparison between the two models has also been extended to cases where the interaction potential He - O${}_2$ is made artificially stronger. In this case vibration can perturb rate constants, but fine-tuning the rigid rotor potential can alleviate the discrepancies between the two models.

11 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Magnetic field effects in ultracold molecular collisions
• Ultracold collisions of oxygen molecules

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quo vadis, cold molecules? - Editorial review
• Molecules Near Absolute Zero and External Field Control of Atomic and Molecular Dynamics
• Full-dimensional quantum scattering calculations on ultracold atom-molecule collisions in magnetic fields: The role of molecular vibrations
• Nonrigidity effects -- a missing puzzle piece in the description of low-energy anisotropic molecular collisions
• Vibrational quenching of cold molecular ions immersed in their parent gas
• Rotational symmetry and degeneracy: a cotangent-perturbed rigid rotator of unperturbed level multiplicity