Improved Models for the Potential Energy Functions of the Ground Singlet and Lowest-Lying Triplet States of the Cesium Dimer
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Date
2012-08-23T19:51:09Z
Authors
Baldwin, Jesse
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Waterloo
Abstract
The Morse/Long Range (MLR) potential has become one of the most reliable and highly
used potential energy functions for diatomic molecules. It includes the theoretical long range
behaviour that diatomic molecules are known to exhibit as they approach the dissociation
limit. Heavy alkali metals with adjacent electronic states often exhibit strong coupling
between the spin and orbital angular momentum. The ground state X¹Σg⁺ and the lowest
lying triplet state aᶟΣᵤ⁺ of Cs₂ exhibit such coupling effects and as a result, modeling the
highest vibrational states of these states is a non-trivial problem. Utilizing scattering length
values obtained from published analysis of 60 Feshbach resonances, the correct form of the
potential energy function was determined. Moreover, the scattering length values were used
to determine the correct leading dispersion coefficient that describes the true form of the
long-range potential energy functions. All previous attempts to determine global potential
energy functions for these states have considered only the optical spectroscopic data. This is
the first ever effort attempting to use scattering lengths determined from cold atom collision
experiments in a combined analysis with conventional spectroscopic data.
Description
Keywords
Cs₂, cesium dimer, potential energy function, scattering length, MLR, spectroscopy, Feshbach