Cold $\mathbf{N}\mathbf{+}\mathrm{NH}$ Collisions in a Magnetic Trap

Cold $N + NH$ Collisions in a Magnetic Trap

Matthew T. Hummon, Timur V. Tscherbul, Jacek Kłos, Hsin-I Lu, Edem Tsikata, Wesley C. Campbell, Alexander Dalgarno, and John M. Doyle

Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 053201 – Published 2 February 2011

Abstract

We present an experimental and theoretical study of atom-molecule collisions in a mixture of cold, trapped N atoms and NH molecules at a temperature of $\sim 600 mK$ . We measure a small $N + NH$ trap loss rate coefficient of $k_{loss}^{(N + NH)} = 9 (5) (3) \times 10^{- 13} {cm}^{3} s^{- 1}$ . Accurate quantum scattering calculations based on ab initio interaction potentials are in agreement with experiment and indicate the magnetic dipole interaction to be the dominant loss mechanism. Our theory further indicates the ratio of $N + NH$ elastic-to-inelastic collisions remains large ( $> 100$ ) into the mK regime.

Received 13 September 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.053201

Authors & Affiliations

Matthew T. Hummon^1,2,*, Timur V. Tscherbul^2,3, Jacek Kłos⁴, Hsin-I Lu^5,2, Edem Tsikata^1,2, Wesley C. Campbell^1,2, Alexander Dalgarno^2,3, and John M. Doyle^1,2

¹Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
²Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
³ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
⁴Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
⁵School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA