Resonant cold scattering of highly vibrationally excited D2 with Ne

Abstract

To accurately map weak D2–Ne long-range interactions, we have studied rotationally inelastic cold scattering of D2 prepared in the vibrationally excited ( v = 4) and rotationally aligned ( j = 2, m) quantum state within the moving frame of a supersonically expanded mixed molecular beam. In contrast to earlier high energy D2–Ne collision experiments, the ( j = 2 → j′ = 0) cold scattering produced highly symmetric angular distributions that strongly suggest a resonant quasi-bound collision complex that lives long enough to make a few rotations. Our partial wave analysis indicates that the scattering dynamics is dominated by a single resonant l = 2 orbital, even in the presence of a broad temperature (0–5 K) distribution that allows incoming orbitals up to l = 5. The dominance of a single orbital suggests that the resonant complex stabilizes through the coupling of the internal ( j = 2) and orbital ( l = 2) angular momentum to produce a total angular momentum of J = 0 for the D2–Ne complex.