Constructive Quantum Interference in Photo-Chemical Reactions

Interferences emerge when multiple pathways coexist together leading towards the same result. Here we report a theoretical study for a reaction scheme that leads to constructive quantum interference in a photo-association reaction of ⁸⁷Rb Bose-Einstein Condensate where the reactant spin state is prepared in a coherent superposition of multiple bare spin states. This is achieved by changing the reactive scattering channel in the photo-association reaction. As the origin of coherent control comes from the spin part of the wavefunction we show that it is sufficient to use radio frequency coupling to achieve the superposition state. Our results show that interferences can be used as a resource for the coherent control of photochemical reactions. The approach is general and can be employed to study a wide spectrum of chemical reactions in the ultracold regime

Figure: Controlling Photo-association reaction rates via different reactive channels.

Constructive Quantum Interference in a Photo-Chemical Reaction of ⁸⁷Rb Bose-Einstein Condensate 
Sumit Suresh Kale; Yong P. Chen; Sabre Kais
J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.1c00826. | Link to PDF