On the role of non-additive interactions in three-body recombination.

Non-additive forces are a cornerstone of molecular spectroscopy and reaction dynamics. However, the relevance of non-additive forces in three-body recombination remains largely unexplored. In this work, we present a global study on the impact of non-additive interactions in three-body recombination: atom-atom-atom and ion-atom-atom.

Ion-atom-atom three-body recombination: From the cold to the thermal regime.

We present a study on ion-atom-atom reaction A + A + B in a wide range of systems and collision energies ranging from 100 μK to 10 K, analyzing two possible products: molecules and molecular ions. The dynamics is performed via a direct three-body formalism based on a classical trajectory method in hyperspherical coordinates developed in Pérez-Ríos et al. [J.

Ozone Formation in Ternary Collisions: Theory and Experiment Reconciled.

The present Letter shows that the formation of ozone in ternary collisions O+O_{2}+M-the primary mechanism of ozone formation in the stratosphere-at temperatures below 200 K (for M=Ar) proceeds through a formation of a temporary complex MO_{2}, while at temperatures above ∼700  K, the reaction proceeds mainly through a formation of long-lived vibrational resonances of O_{3}^{*}. At intermediate temperatures 200-700 K, the process cannot be viewed as a two-step mechanism, often used to simplify and approximate collisions of three atoms or molecules. The developed theoretical approach is applied to the reaction O+O_{2}+Ar because of extensive experimental data available.

Classical threshold law for the formation of van der Waals molecules.

We study the role of pairwise long-range interactions in the formation of van der Waals molecules through direct three-body recombination processes A + B + B → AB + B, based on a classical trajectory method in hyperspherical coordinates developed in our earlier works [J. Pérez-Ríos et al., J.

On the formation of van der Waals complexes through three-body recombination.

In this work, we show that van der Waals molecules X-RG (where RG is the rare gas atom) may be created through direct three-body recombination collisions, i.e., X + RG + RG → X-RG + RG.

Dynamics of polar polarizable rotors acted upon by unipolar electromagnetic pulses: From the sudden to the adiabatic regime.

We study, analytically as well as numerically, the dynamics that arises from the interaction of a polar polarizable rigid rotor with single unipolar electromagnetic pulses of varying length, Δ, with respect to the rotational period of the rotor, . In the sudden, non-adiabatic limit, Δ ≪ , we derive analytic expressions for the rotor's wavefunctions, kinetic energies, and field-free evolution of orientation and alignment. We verify the analytic results by solving the corresponding time-dependent Schrödinger equation numerically and extend the temporal range of the interactions considered all the way to the adiabatic limit, Δ > , where general analytic solutions beyond the field-free case are no longer available.