The ground state and adiabatic Ra are different. Credit: Bennaceur.
Researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their partners published a theoretical work suggesting probing helium by highly charged projectiles.
The existence of a very delicate quantum system has been theoretically discussed since 1920s. It was only observed in 1993 or 1994 as a research topic.
The weakest bound in the diatomic system is the helium dimer, which has a tiny binding energy and an enormous size. The unique nature of the system and its extreme dimensions make it a good choice to study electron correlations over large distances. Most of the time the dimer is in a classically forbidden region.
The researchers at IMP and their partners considered the structure of the helium dimer to be broken into singly charged ion by colliding with highly charged projectiles.
It was found that the interaction of an ultrafast projectile with an extreme extended objectpossesses interesting features that are absent in normal collisions with normal molecule/atoms.
Ultrafast projectiles can probe the structure of the ground state in the halo region between 14 angstroms and 250 angstroms, where the dimer spends 80% of its time.
They suggested that projectiles can be used for accurate determination of the binding energy and that the classical description of the collision dynamics fails completely.
There are several laboratories where these processes are studied. Researchers at IMP have the ability to prepare various gaseous experiments, including dimer targets, in a reaction microscope at the heavy ion storage ring, which lays the groundwork for future research on helium dimer.
B. Najjari and his team wrote about Probing the Helium Dimer by Highly Charged Projectiles in the Physical Review Letters. There is a DOI: 10.1073/physRevLett.
Journal information: Physical Review Letters.
There were highly charged projectiles retrieved from the ocean on November 26th, 2021.
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