Calculations of long-range potential wells for highly excited homonuclear and heteronuclear alkali dimers.

Abstract

The weakly bound long-range potential curves between a highly excited alkali atom M(*)(n(e)s) and a ground state alkali atom M(n(g)s) are calculated using simple but reasonably accurate models for long-range dispersion and exchange interactions for all homonuclear and heteronuclear combinations. For K(2), where experimental results are available, the agreement is quite good (binding energies of observed vibrational levels within approximately 10%). We find that at least a zero-point vibrational level occurs for n(e)-n(g)</=12.