Issue Europhys. Lett. Volume 69, Number 3, February 2005 Page(s) 353 - 357 Section Atomic and molecular physics DOI 10.1209/epl/i2004-10364-5 Published online 05 January 2005

Europhys. Lett., 69 (3), pp. 353-357 (2005)
DOI: 10.1209/epl/i2004-10364-5

Fine-structure transitions in the exit channel of optical collisions

C. Figl¹, J. Grosser¹, O. Hoffmann¹ and F. Rebentrost<sup>2

1</sup>  Institut für Atom- und Molekülphysik, Universität Hannover 30167 Hannover, Germany
²  Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik - 85748 Garching, Germany

received 21 September 2004; accepted in final form 24 November 2004
published online 5 January 2005

Abstract
We study collisions by laser excitation of the collision pair in a differential scattering experiment. The relative population of the K( 4p) ²P fine-structure sublevels reflects the nonadiabatic coupling in the convergence region of the interaction potentials and illustrates the energy dependence of the nonadiabatic transition probability. Close coupling scattering calculations show a very good agreement with the experimental results, indicating a corresponding accuracy of the available potential data. The spin-orbit interaction in the coupling region is found to be not significantly different from the free atom value.

PACS
34.50.Rk - Laser-modified scattering and reactions.
31.50.Gh - Surface crossings, non-adiabatic couplings.
34.20.-b - Interatomic and intermolecular potentials and forces, potential energy surfaces for collisions.

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