Reactive Resonance and the Role of Electron Angular Momentum

Schematic of experimental setup (left panel)

Understanding the reaction mechanism at the atomic and molecular level is a central task of chemistry. Within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, a chemical reaction is envisioned as nuclear dynamics evolving from reactants to products on a potential energy surface (PES). To reveal the detailed mechanistic origin of such an old bond-breaking and new bond-forming process, a measurement of state-to-state differential cross-sections (DCSs) is essential. Its fine structure often serves as a fingerprint to identify quantum dynamics phenomena in a bimolecular reactive encounter. Observation of these fine structures is, however, difficult, because the interference feature may appear in the state-to-state DCSs only with very high angular resolution.