Determination of the He-He, Ne-Ne, Ar-Ar, and H$_{2}$ interaction potential by wave function imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a direct experimental method using wave function imaging to determine the interaction potentials of diatomic systems like He-He, Ne-Ne, Ar-Ar, and H2, providing a new approach to measure potential energy curves.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of wave function imaging with a COLTRIMS microscope to directly extract diatomic interaction potentials from vibrational wave functions.

Findings

Successfully measured vibrational wave functions of several diatomic molecules.

Derived potential energy curves from wave function curvature.

Demonstrated the method's effectiveness for different atomic pairs.

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 Schr\"odinger 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.