Cold collisions of highly vibrationally excited and aligned D₂ with Ne

Resonant scattering of highly vibrationally excited and aligned D₂ in cold collisions with Ne has recently been probed experimentally using the Stark-induced adiabatic Raman passage (SARP) technique [1]. A partial-wave analysis and numerical fitting of the experimental data for Δj=-2 transition in D₂(v=4, j=2) + Ne collisions attributed the measured angular distribution to an l=2 shape resonance near E/k_B=1 kelvin. Here, we report computation of a new potential energy surface for the Ne-H₂ interaction suitable for the study of collisions between highly vibrationally excited H₂/D₂ with Ne as well as quantum scattering calculations of stereodynamics of D₂(v=4, j=2) + Ne collisions probing Δj=-2 rotational transitions in D₂. Our results show that collisions are dominated by a strong l=5 resonance near 3 K and a weaker l=6 resonance near 8 K. Our calculations do not support the claim that the measured angular distributions are dominated by a single l=2 partial-wave resonance near 1 K.

[1] W. E. Perreault, H. Zhou, N. Mukherjee, and R. N. Zare, Resonant cold scattering of highly vibrationally excited D₂ with Ne, J. Chem. Phys. 157, 144301 (2022).