Resonant cold scattering of highly vibrationally excited D2 with Ne

Abstract

To accurately map weak D2–Ne long-range interactions, we have studied rotationally inelastic cold scattering of D2 prepared in the vibrationally excited (v = 4) and rotationally aligned (j = 2, m) quantum state within the moving frame of a supersonically expanded mixed molecular beam. In contrast to earlier high energy D2–Ne collision experiments, the (j = 2 → j′ = 0) cold scattering produced highly symmetric angular distributions that strongly suggest a resonant quasi-bound collision complex that lives long enough to make a few rotations. Our partial wave analysis indicates that the scattering dynamics is dominated by a single resonant l = 2 orbital, even in the presence of a broad temperature (0–5 K) distribution that allows incoming orbitals up to l = 5. The dominance of a single orbital suggests that the resonant complex stabilizes through the coupling of the internal (j = 2) and orbital (l = 2) angular momentum to produce a total angular momentum of J = 0 for the D2–Ne complex.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Oct 10, 2022
Source ID
10.1063/5.0114349

Entities

People

  • Haowen Zhou
  • Nandini Mukherjee
  • Richard Zare
  • William E Perreault

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • National Science Foundation
  • Stanford University

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Astronomy/Astrophysics
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics

Technology Areas

  • Hypersonics
  • Hypersonics - Hypersonic Flight
  • Quantum Computing
  • Space