Interactions and low-energy collisions between an alkali ion and an alkali atom of a different nucleus

Abstract

We study theoretically interaction potentials and low-energy collisions between different alkali atoms and alkali ions. Specifically, we consider systems such as X + , where X( is either Li(Cs+) or Cs(Li+), Na(Cs+) or Cs(Na+) and Li(Rb+) or Rb(Li+). We calculate the molecular potentials of the ground and first two excited states of these three systems using a pseudopotential method and compare our results with those obtained by others. We derive ground-state scattering wave functions and analyze the cold collisional properties of these systems for a wide range of energies. We find that, in order to get convergent results for the total scattering cross sections for energies of the order 1 K, one needs to take into account at least 60 partial waves. The low-energy scattering properties calculated in this paper may serve as a precursor for experimental exploration of quantum collisions between an alkali atom and an alkali ion of a different nucleus.

Cold hybrid ion-atom systems

“…into the characterization of scattering resonances. Similar approach has been developed also by (Raab and Friedrich, 2009) to describe the bound states of the polarization potential.…”

“…From (Tomza, 2015). (Li et al, 2015), Na + +Rb (Yan et al, 2014(Yan et al, , 2013, Be + +Li (Rakshit and Deb, 2011), H + +Na/K (Watanabe et al, 2002), H + +D . The non-radiative charge transfer driven by nonadiabatic couplings has been theoretically investigated for Ca + +Rb (Belyaev et al, 2012;Tacconi et al, 2011) and Yb + +Rb (Sayfutyarova et al, 2013).…”

Structure, spectroscopy and cold collisions of the (SrNa)+ ionic system

“…We use Numerov-Cooley algorithm [19] to solve the second-order differential equation as described in previous articles Ref. [20]. We use FORTRAN code to find the wave functions by choosing appropriate boundary condition.…”

Spectroscopic properties of the molecular ions BeX+ (X=Na, K, Rb): forming cold molecular ions from an ion–atom mixture by stimulated Raman adiabatic process

“…The molecular ion (BeLi) + is extensively investigated using only the ground and the first excited states [31]. The low-energy collisions for the alkali ion and an alkali atom system have also been performed [32]. Recently, Rakshit et al [33] have theoretically investigated (BeLi) + system at low energy predicting the possibility of formation of the cold molecular ion by photoassociation (PA) process.…”