Effects of conical intersections on hyperfine quenching of hydroxyl OH in collision with an ultracold Sr atom

Abstract The effect of conical intersections (CIs) on electronic relaxation, transitions from excited states to ground states, is well studied, but their influence on hyperfine quenching in a reactant molecule is not known. Here, we report on ultracold collision dynamics of the hydroxyl free-radical...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Ming Li, Jacek Kłos, Alexander Petrov, Hui Li, Svetlana Kotochigova
Format: article
Langue:EN
Publié: Nature Portfolio 2020
Sujets:
R
Q
Accès en ligne:https://doaj.org/article/407548c5b5c940598b6e65ecf7bc6e4e
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
Description
Résumé:Abstract The effect of conical intersections (CIs) on electronic relaxation, transitions from excited states to ground states, is well studied, but their influence on hyperfine quenching in a reactant molecule is not known. Here, we report on ultracold collision dynamics of the hydroxyl free-radical OH with Sr atoms leading to quenching of OH hyperfine states. Our quantum-mechanical calculations of this process reveal that quenching is efficient due to anomalous molecular dynamics in the vicinity of the conical intersection at collinear geometry. We observe wide scattering resonance features in both elastic and inelastic rate coefficients at collision energies below $$k_{\text {B}}\times 10 \, \hbox {mK}$$ k B × 10 mK . They are identified as either p- or d-wave shape resonances. We also describe the electronic potentials relevant for these non-reactive collisions, their diabatization procedure, as well as the non-adiabatic coupling between the diabatic potentials near the CIs.