Physics Colloquium: Cold chemistry with cold molecules

Abstract:

Understanding of the low temperature chemistry at the limit where de Broglie wavelength exceeds dimensions of atoms and molecules requires a change of intuition. In “warm” chemistry the knowledge about the transition state corresponding with the highest potential energy along the reactionpath is sufficient and weak long-range interactions can be ignored. This picture changes in the cold regime where long range interaction start playing the central role in collision dynamics. Moreover, quantum phenomena such as tunneling and and quantum statistics become important inqualitative description of cold reactions. In our group we developed a method that enabled us to investigate cold chemistry with molecules demonstrating how molecular degrees of freedom fundamentally modify cold interactions

Event Organizer: Dr. Ishay Pomerantz