The Ne–O2 potential energy surface from high-resolution diffraction and glory scattering experiments and from the Zeeman spectrum

Abstract

The full anisotropic potential energy surface for the Ne–O2 van der Waals molecule has been obtained from the simultaneous analysis of total differential cross section data with well resolved diffraction oscillations and of absolute total integral cross section data with glory structure measured in Perugia, of the Zeeman spectrum measured in Nijmegen, and of transport coefficients taken from literature. The anisotropy of the interaction is obtained from the Zeeman spectrum using both numerical and analytical approaches for the energy levels, and from the quenching of the diffraction oscillations in the total differential cross section within the infinite-order-sudden approximation. The latter approximation is practically exact under the experimental conditions, as previously shown for the similar Ne–N2 system by comparison with exact close-coupling scattering calculations. The derived potential energy surface represents a dramatic improvement with respect to a previous approximate estimate.