Determination of the He-He, Ne-Ne, Ar-Ar, and H$_{2}$ interaction potential by wave function imaging
physics.atom-ph
/ Authors
S. Zeller, M. Kunitski, J. Voigtsberger, M. Waitz, F. Trinter, S. Eckart, A. Kalinin, A. Czasch, L. Ph. H. Schmidt, T. Weber
and 3 more authors
/ Abstract
We report on a direct method to measure the internuclear potential energy curve of diatomic systems. A COLTRIMS reaction microscope was used to measure the squares of the vibrational wave functions of H$_{2}$, He$_{2}$, Ne$_{2}$, and Ar$_{2}$. The Schrödinger equation relates the curvature of the wave function to the potential V(R) and therefore offers a simple but elegant way to extract the shape of the potential.