L mixing and dissociation of Rydberg molecules accompanying slow collisions with inert-gas atoms

Abstract

Processes involving a change of orbital angular momentum l and the dissociation of Rydberg molecules when they collide with inert-gas atoms are considered, using a method based on analyzing the terms of the interacting systems. The proposed method makes it possible to take into account the perturbations in a large group of Rydberg states that weakly penetrate into the ion core and to go beyond the limits of the two-level approximations [R. F. Stebbings and F. B. Dunning, eds., Rydberg States of Atoms and Molecules (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Mir, Moscow, 1985)] widely used in the theory of l mixing with the participation of Rydberg atoms. Using the Na**(nd)+Xe reaction as an example, it is demonstrated that this method gives good results in a wide range of variation of the principal quantum number n of the Rydberg electron (n≈10–40). Features of the l mixing and dissociation of Rydberg molecules are studied for the H2**+Xe system. It is shown that collisional dissociation occurs by the formation of an intermediate Rydberg state of the molecules, followed by self-decay into a dissociative continuum.