Glory scattering in deeply inelastic molecular collisions

For molecular collisions, the deflection of a molecule’s trajectory provides one of the most sensitive probes of the interaction potential and there are general rules of thumb that relate the direction of deflection to precollision conditions. Following intuition, forward scattering results from glancing collisions, whereas near head-on collisions result in back scattering. Here we present the observation of forward scattering in inelastic processes that defies this common wisdom. For deeply inelastic collisions between NO radicals and CO or HD molecules, we observed forward scattering in fully resolved pair-correlated differential cross-sections, despite the low impact parameters that are needed to induce a sufficient energy transfer. We rationalized these findings by extending the textbook model of hard-sphere scattering—taking inelastic energy transfer into account—and attribute the forward scattering to glory-type trajectories caused by attractive forces. This phenomenon, which we refer to as hard-collision glory scattering, is predicted to be ubiquitous. We derive under which conditions hard-collision glory scattering occurs and retrospectively identify such behaviour in previously studied systems.