Quasi-One-Dimensional Ultracold Rigid-Rotor Collisions: Reactive And Nonreactive Cases

We study polar alkali-metal dimer scattering in a quasi-one-dimensional geometry for both reactive and nonreactive species. Elastic and reactive rates are computed as a function of the amplitude of a static electric field within a purely long-range model with suitable boundary conditions at shorter range. We describe the diatomic molecules as rigid rotors and results are compared to the fixed-dipole approximation. We show in particular that for molecules with a sufficiently strong induced dipole moment oriented perpendicular to the trap axis, the long-range repulsive interaction leads to the suppression of short-range processes. Such shielding effect occurs for both reactive and nonreactive molecules, preventing two-body reactions as well as losses due to complex-mediated processes [M. Mayle et al., Phys. Rev. A 85, 062712 (2012)] from occurring. The present results demonstrate the possibility to suppress loss rates in current ultracold molecule experiments using one-dimensional confinement.