Dynamics of a charged impurity in an ultracold bath

• Applicant: Jesus Perez Rios, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Optics, Quantum Optics and Physics of Atoms, Molecules and Plasmas
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493725479

This proposal is devoted to studying the reaction dynamics of a charged impurity in an ultracold bath. The main idea is to extend the few-body approach of Pérez-Ríos et al., devoted to two-body and three-body collisions between charged and neutral particles, into a more general framework beyond few-body physics and including time-dependent potentials. Surprisingly enough, this formalism applies to other areas like molecule-atom-atom three-body recombination reactions relevant for cold chemistry, action spectroscopy, and atmospheric physics. We want to develop a new theoretical toolkit inherited from protein folding dynamics, which applies to cold chemistry reactions with ions and neutrals. In particular, our approach will break the actual limitations on cold and ultracold systems by bridging the few-body approach to the many-body methods through molecular dynamics simulations to efficiently sample the phase-space. In addition, the Markov state theory is employed to estimate transition probabilities between different states, and finally, through the transition path theory, one can calculate reaction rates. This approach allows us to include the time-dependence of trapping potentials during the reaction, which can not be done with a full quantal treatment. The proposed approach is general, can handle time-dependent potentials, and it is extensible to any system. Furthermore, the resulting code will be made available to the community.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: India, Netherlands, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Sandra Brünken, Ph.D.; Sourav Dutta, Ph.D.; Professor Viatcheslav Kokoouline, Ph.D.