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.
File Format
File Size
603.23 KB
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