Collisional quenching of metastable states of antiprotonic helium by hydrogen and deuterium molecules

Abstract

The quenching of metastable states of antiprotonic helium by collisions with hydrogen and deuterium molecules was studied. A systematic investigation of the delayed annihilation time spectra at various H2 and D2 admixture ratios at the ppm level revealed characteristic changes of their shape, which indicated a strong principal and orbital quantum number dependent quenching of levels in both cases. Applying a laser spectroscopy technique to measure the lifetimes of individual states and cascades we deduced H2 and D2 quenching cross-sections for the states (n, l )= (39, 35) and (37, 34). These cross-sections establish for D2 molecules the strong increase of the quenching efficiency with increasing principal quantum number n of the state under investigation previously reported for the case of H2 admixtures. Our experiments indicate that the low-n state (37, 34) is somewhat less affected by D2 than by H2, while the high-n state (39, 35) is equally quenched by both isotopes.