Long-range diagonal adiabatic corrections for the ground molecular state of alkali-metal dimers

Abstract

We study long-range diagonal adiabatic corrections to the interaction potentials of the ground state of homonuclear alkali-metal dimers. We show that in the long-range limit the diagonal adiabatic matrix elements may be expressed as a series of inverse powers of the internuclear distance. Each of the nonzero coefficients of this expansion is a mass-dependent correction term to the dispersion coefficients. They are computed by using a complex integral representation, that transforms the molecular problem into an atomic one. Numerical results are presented. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}