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Molecular physics

Breaking up is hard to do

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Dissociating hydrogen gas seems like it should be as easy as pulling apart two identical atoms. But resonant electron-impact experiments reveal that quantum interference induces a fundamental asymmetry in the process.

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Figure 1: Schematic representation of resonant electron attachment (green vertical arrow) producing coherent dissociating wavepackets on two electronic states (red and blue curves), with opposite parity, of the transient anion H2−.

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  1. Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Daniel S. Slaughter & Thomas N. Rescigno

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  1. Daniel S. Slaughter
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  2. Thomas N. Rescigno
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Correspondence to Daniel S. Slaughter.

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Slaughter, D., Rescigno, T. Breaking up is hard to do. Nat. Phys. 14, 109–110 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4308

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