Reaction kinetics of ultracold molecule-molecule collisions.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30531934.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-07576-1 and PMC identifier 6286306.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Studying chemical reactions on a state-to-state level tests and improves our fundamental understanding of chemical processes. For such investigations it is convenient to make use of ultracold atomic and molecular reactants as they can be prepared in well defined internal and external quantum states. Here, we investigate a single-channel reaction of two Li2-Feshbach molecules where one of the molecules dissociates into two atoms 2AB ⇒ AB + A + B. The process is a prototype for a class of four-body collisions where two reactants produce three product particles. We measure the collisional dissociation rate constant of this process as a function of collision energy/temperature and scattering length. We confirm an Arrhenius-law dependence on the collision energy, an a4 power-law dependence on the scattering length a and determine a universal four body reaction constant.