Tuning bimolecular chemical reactions by electric fields

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical approach to control bimolecular chemical reactions using electric fields, showing how external fields can induce resonances and alter reaction outcomes.

Contribution

The authors develop a hyperspherical coordinate-based quantum scattering method to analyze reactions in external fields, enabling detailed predictions of electric field effects.

Findings

Electric fields induce resonant scattering in chemical reactions.

Reaction probabilities and product distributions are significantly modified by electric fields.

External fields can control the branching ratios between reactive and inelastic processes.

Abstract

We develop a theoretical method for solving the quantum mechanical reactive scattering problem in the presence of external fields based on a hyperspherical coordinate description of the reaction complex combined with the total angular momentum representation for collisions in external fields. The method allows us to obtain converged results for the chemical reaction LiF + H -> Li + HF in an electric field. Our calculations demonstrate that, by inducing couplings between states of different total angular momenta, electric fields with magnitudes <150 kV/cm give rise to resonant scattering and a significant modification of the total reaction probabilities, product state distributions and the branching ratios for reactive vs inelastic scattering.