Engineering topics

Greene, Chris H.

Publications and source records attributed to Greene, Chris H..

8 records

DOE OSTI2024

Adiabatic and post-adiabatic hyperspherical treatment of the huge ungerade proton-hydrogen scattering length

While the hydrogen molecular ion is the simplest molecule in nature and very well studied in all of its properties, it remains an interesting system to use for explorations of fundamental questions. One such question treated in this study relates to finding an optimal adiabatic representation of the physics, i.e., the best adiabatic description that minimizes the role of nonadiabatic effects. As a test case explored here in detail, we consider the ungerade symmetry of $H$$^{+}_{2}$, which is known to have a huge scattering length of order 750 Bohr radii, and an incredibly weakly bound excited state. We show that a hyperspherical adiabatic description does an excellent job of capturing the main physics. Furthermore, our calculation yields a competitive scattering length and shows that nonadiabatic corrections are small and can even be adequately captured using the post-adiabatic theory of Klar and Fano.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Coherent-control phase lag across doubly excited atomic strontium resonances in an ω - 2 ω interference scheme

Accurate calculations of phase lag associated with coherent control where an excited system decays into more than one product channel have recently been reported for atomic barium in Wang and Greene [Y. Wang and C. H. Greene, Phys. Rev. A 105, 013113 (2022)]. The present study extends the calculations to make predictions of that observable for another alkaline-earth-metal atom, strontium, with a discussion of its spectrum and phase lag for energies between the Sr + 4⁢d 3/2 and 4⁢d 5/2 thresholds. Here, we explore the physics influenced by the electron correlations of strontium and the long-range Coulomb potential. The behavior of the phase lag cannot be simply addressed by a time-delay analysis, although the latter is often used to address the prominent channel of resonance decay of doubly excited states.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

Competing ionization and dissociation in the H 2 gerade system

A numerically solvable two-dimensional (2D) model, employed by the authors to study the dissociative recombination of H$^+_2$ in the ungerade symmetry, is extended to describe the collision process in the gerade symmetry of H$_2$. In this symmetry, the ionization and dissociation processes are driven primarily by the direct, curve-crossing mechanism. The model is represented by a set of three coupled electronic channels in 2D, in the space of $\textit{s, p, d}$ partial waves of the colliding electron. In this work, we demonstrate that the Born-Oppenheimer properties of the H$_2$ molecule in the relevant range of internuclear distances can be described by such a model. The molecular rotational degrees of freedom are accounted for by the rotational frame transformation. The numerical solution of the model is discussed, and the resulting rovibrationally inelastic and dissociative recombination cross sections are compared with the available data.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

Multichannel photoelectron phase lag across atomic barium autoionizing resonances

Phase lag associated with coherent control where an excited system decays into more than one product channel has been subjected to numerous investigations. Although previous theoretical studies have treated the phase lag across resonances in model calculations, quantitative agreement has never been achieved between the theoretical model and an experimental measurement of the phase lag from the ω-2ω ionization of atomic barium. Yamazaki and Elliot, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 053001 (2007); Phys. Rev. A 76, 053401 (2007), suggesting that a toy model with phenomenological parameters is inadequate to describe the observed phase lag behavior. Here the phase lag is treated quantitatively in a multichannel coupling formulation, and our calculation based on a multichannel quantum defect and R-matrix treatment achieves good agreement with the experimental observations. Our treatment also develops formulas to describe the effects of hyperfine depolarization on multiphoton ionization processes. Moreover, we identify resonances between Ba + 5d 3/2 and 5d 5/2 thresholds that have apparently never been experimentally observed and classified.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Resonant control of photoelectron directionality by interfering one- and two-photon pathways

Coherent control of interfering one- and two-photon processes has for decades been the subject of research to achieve the redirection of photocurrent. The present study develops two-pathway coherent control of ground-state helium atom above-threshold photoionization for energies up to the N = 2 threshold, based on a multichannel quantum defect and R-matrix calculation. Three parameters are controlled in our treatment: the optical interference phase ΔΦ, the reduced electric field strength χ = $\mathscr{E}^2_ω$$\mathscr{E}_{2ω}$, and the final state energy ε. A small energy change near a resonance is shown to flip the emission direction of photoelectrons with high efficiency, through an example where 90% of photoelectrons whose energy is near the 2p 2 1 S e resonance flip their emission direction. However, the large fraction of photoelectrons ionized at the intermediate state energy, which are not influenced by the optical control, make this control scheme challenging to realize experimentally.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Two-photon above-threshold ionization of helium

Multiphoton ionization provides a clear window into the nature of electron correlations in the helium atom. In the present study, the final-state energy range extends up to the region near the N = 2 and N = 3 ionization thresholds, where two-photon ionization proceeds via continuum intermediate states above the lowest threshold. Our calculations are performed using multichannel quantum defect theory (MQDT) and the streamlined R-matrix method. The sum and integration over all intermediate states in the two-photon ionization amplitude is evaluated using the inhomogeneous R-matrix method developed by Robicheaux and Gao. The seamless connection of that method with MQDT allows us to present high-resolution spectra of the final-state Rydberg resonances. Our analysis classifies the resonances above the N = 2 threshold in terms of their group theory quantum numbers. Furthermore, their dominant decay channels are found to obey the previously conjectured propensity rule far more weakly for these even-parity states than was observed for the odd-parity states relevant to single-photon ionization.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Backpropagated frame transformation theory: A reformulation

In this work, the energy-dependent frame transformation theory of Gao and Greene [H. Gao and C. H. Greene, Phys. Rev. A 42, 6946 (1990)] is extended to yield a quantitatively accurate description of the dissociative recombination process. Evidence is presented to show that direct application of the original theory leads to inaccurate cross sections. A major revision, based on an interaction-free backpropagation of the Born-Oppenheimer solutions, markedly improves the frame transformation theory, reducing its average error by orders of magnitude. The original theory and its extension are tested on the previously explored two-dimensional (2D) model that is tailored to describe the singlet ungerade states of molecular hydrogen. The 2D model can be solved exactly (within the numerical accuracy) without implementing the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. These exact results then serve as a benchmark for the frame transformation theory developed in this paper.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Dissociative Recombination of Cold HeH + Ions

The HeH + cation is the simplest molecular prototype of the indirect dissociative recombination (DR) process that proceeds through electron capture into Rydberg states of the corresponding neutral molecule. This Letter develops the first application of our recently developed energy-dependent frame transformation theory to the indirect DR processes. The theoretical model is based on the multichannel quantum-defect theory with the vibrational basis states computed using exterior complex scaling of the nuclear Hamiltonian. The ab initio electronic R-matrix theory is adopted to compute quantum defects as functions of the collision energy and of the internuclear distance. The resulting DR rates are convolved over the beam energy distributions relevant to a recent experiment at the Cryogenic Storage Ring, giving good agreement between the experiment and the theory.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗