Scattering of metastable mercury atoms

Abstract

Differential elastic cross sections for the scattering of the metastable 6³P₂ state of mercury from sodium, potassium and rubidium have been measured at thermal energies. Interference structure is resolved in all cases, suggesting that the atoms interact by a single effective potential in the attractive region probed at these energies. No attenuation of the interference structure is observed so that quenching of the metastable state is not an important process along trajectories sampling only the attractive part of the potential.