Universality and Chaoticity in Ultracold K+KRb Chemical Reactions
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Publication Title
Nature Communications
Volume
8
Abstract
A fundamental question in the study of chemical reactions is how reactions proceed at a collision energy close to absolute zero. This question is no longer hypothetical: quantum degenerate gases of atoms and molecules can now be created at temperatures lower than a few tens of nanokelvin. Here we consider the benchmark ultracold reaction between, the most-celebrated ultracold molecule, KRb and K. We map out an accurate ab initio ground-state potential energy surface of the K2Rb complex in full dimensionality and report numerically-exact quantum-mechanical reaction dynamics. The distribution of rotationally resolved rates is shown to be Poissonian. An analysis of the hyperspherical adiabatic potential curves explains this statistical character revealing a chaotic distribution for the short-range collision complex that plays a key role in governing the reaction outcome. © The Author(s) 2017.
Language
english
Repository Citation
Croft, J. F.,
Makrides, C.,
Li, M.,
Petrov, A.,
Kendrick, B. K.,
Naduvalath, B.,
Kotochigova, S.
(2017).
Universality and Chaoticity in Ultracold K+KRb Chemical Reactions.
Nature Communications, 8
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15897