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Phys. Rev. A 69, 042715 (2004) [15 pages]

Cold collisions of atomic hydrogen with antihydrogen atoms: An optical potential approach

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B. Zygelman*
Department of Physics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154, USA

Alejandro Saenz†
AG Moderne Optik, Insitut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, D-10117 Berlin, Germany

P. Froelich‡
Department of Quantum Chemistry, Uppsala University, Box 518, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden

S. Jonsell§
Department of Physics, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden

Received 14 October 2003; published 20 April 2004

We present a theory that describes the interaction of hydrogen atoms with antihydrogen at subkelvin temperatures. The formalism includes a nonlocal complex optical potential, whose imaginary component describes the breakup of the H-H̅ complex into positronium and protonium fragments. Using ab inito methods, we construct the imaginary part of the optical potential and calculate the cross sections for fragmentation in ultracold collisions of H and H̅ . We find a 35% reduction in the value of the scattering length from that obtained in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. We estimate the lifetimes for quasibound states of this complex to fragment into a protonium-positronium pair.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.69.042715
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.69.042715
PACS:
34.10.+x, 34.90.+q, 36.10.−k

*Also at MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Electronic address: bernard@physics.unlv.edu

†Electronic address: alejandro.saenz@physik.hu-berlin.de

‡Electronic address: piotr.froelich@kvac.uu.se

§Electronic address: Svante.Jonsell@tp.umu.se

 
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