Observation of Feshbach Resonances in the F + H2 → HF + H Reaction

  • Qiu, Minghui
  • Ren, Zefeng
  • Che, Li
  • Dai, Dongxu
  • Harich, Steve A.
  • Wang, Xiuyan
  • Yang, Xueming
  • Xu, Chuanxiu
  • Xie, Daiqian
  • Gustafsson, Magnus
  • Skodje, Rex T.
  • Sun, Zhigang
  • Zhang, Dong H.

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, 2Center for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, Liaoning 116023, P. R. China. 3Department of Physics, Dalian Jiaotong University, Dalian, P. R. China. 4Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210093, P. R. China. 5Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, P.O. Box 23-166, Taipei, Taiwan. 6Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. 7Department of Computational Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260.

*These authors contributed equally to this work.

†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Supporting Online Material: www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5766/1440/DC1; Materials and Methods; Figs. S1 to S5; References

5 December 2005; accepted 3 January 2006

10.1126/science.1123452

Science 311(5766):p 1440-1443, March 10, 2006.

Reaction resonances, or transiently stabilized transition-state structures, have proven highly challenging to capture experimentally. Here, we used the highly sensitive H atom Rydberg tagging time-of-flight method to conduct a crossed molecular beam scattering study of the F + H2 → HF + H reaction with full quantum-state resolution. Pronounced forward-scattered HF products in the v′ = 2 vibrational state were clearly observed at a collision energy of 0.52 kcal/mol; this was attributed to both the ground and the first excited Feshbach resonances trapped in the peculiar HF(v′ = 3)−H′ vibrationally adiabatic potential, with substantial enhancement by constructive interference between the two resonances.

Copyright © 2006 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science