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Abstract
A Stark decelerator produces beams of molecules with high quantum state purity, and small spatial, temporal and velocity spreads. These tamed molecular beams are ideally suited for high-resolution crossed beam scattering experiments. When velocity map imaging is used, the Stark decelerator allows the measurement of scattering images with unprecedented radial sharpness and angular resolution. Differential cross sections must be extracted from these high-resolution images with extreme care, however. Common image analysis techniques that are used throughout in crossed beam experiments can result in systematic errors, in particular in the determination of collision energy, and the allocation of scattering angles to observed peaks in the angular scattering distribution. Using a high-resolution data set on inelastic collisions of velocity-controlled NO radicals with Ne atoms, we describe the challenges met by the high resolution, and present methods to mitigate or overcome them.
Highlights
In crossed beam molecular scattering studies, the angular distribution of scattered products, which describes how the molecules are deflected during a collision, constitutes one of the most important of all observations
Inelastic NO-Ne collisions Figure 4 presents the experimental scattering images that are obtained for inelastic collisions de-exciting the NO radicals to the (1/2e) state
The images that result from full simulations of the experiment, using the differential cross sections from quantum scattering calculations based on ab initio potential energy surfaces as inputs, are shown in the right column
Summary
In crossed beam molecular scattering studies, the angular distribution of scattered products, which describes how the molecules are deflected during a collision, constitutes one of the most important of all observations. If one would connect the points in the image with highest intensity with each other, a circle that defines the Newton diagram of the scattering process will result, i.e., one would retrieve the unblurred image that would have been measured in the absence of any velocity spread or any other effect that reduces image resolution.
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