Trap-induced atom-ion complexes: a time-independent approach

TL;DR

This paper develops a time-independent model to study how trapped ions and neutral atoms form long-lived complexes, revealing the link between chaotic scattering behavior and complex formation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-independent approach to analyze atom-ion scattering, connecting chaos theory with complex formation in trapped ion systems.

Findings

Complex formation probability correlates with system chaoticity.

Trap parameters and species influence atom-ion interaction dynamics.

Chaotic scattering is a key indicator of complex stability.

Abstract

A trapped ion immersed in a neutral bath shows long-lived atom-ion complexes that significantly alter its chemical properties, and, thus the ion stability. In this work, we present a general study of trapped ion-atom scattering with the ion modeled as a charge distribution defined by the spatial extent of its ground-state wavefunction. After mapping the time-dependent problem onto a time-independent framework, we investigate the role of the trap, the atomic species, atom-ion interaction, and collision energy in shaping the chaotic dynamics of the system. We find that the probability of atom-ion complex formation directly measures its chaoticity. Therefore, our results establish a clear relationship between the emergence of chaotic scattering and the presence of ion-atom complexes.