Photoassociation of a cold-atom-molecule pair. II. Second-order perturbation approach

Journal Article · Fri Apr 15 00:00:00 EDT 2011 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.83.042707· OSTI ID:21544633

Lepers, M; Vexiau, R; Bouloufa, N; Dulieu, O ^[1]; Kokoouline, V ^[1]

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1. Laboratoire Aime Cotton, CNRS, Bat. 505, Universite Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay Cedex (France)

The electrostatic interaction between an excited atom and a diatomic ground-state molecule in an arbitrary rovibrational level at large mutual separations is investigated with a general second-order perturbation theory, in the perspective of modeling the photoassociation between cold atoms and molecules. We find that the combination of quadrupole-quadrupole and van der Waals interactions competes with the rotational energy of the dimer, limiting the range of validity of the perturbative approach to distances larger than 100 Bohr radii. Numerical results are given for the long-range interaction between Cs and Cs{sub 2}, showing that the photoassociation is probably efficient for any Cs{sub 2} rotational energy.

• OSTI ID: 21544633
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Vol. 83, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.83.042707; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 1050-2947
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ATOM-MOLECULE COLLISIONS
ATOMS
CESIUM
DIMERS
DISTURBANCES
GROUND STATES
INTERACTION RANGE
INTERACTIONS
MOLECULES
PERTURBATION THEORY
QUADRUPOLES
VAN DER WAALS FORCES
ALKALI METALS
ATOM COLLISIONS
COLLISIONS
DISTANCE
ELEMENTS
ENERGY LEVELS
METALS
MOLECULE COLLISIONS
MULTIPOLES