title: Ultracold Rb-OH collisions and prospects for sympathetic cooling.
abstract: We compute ab initio cross sections for cold collisions of Rb atoms with OH radicals. We predict collision rate constants of order 10(-11) cm3/s at temperatures in the range 10-100 mK at which molecules have already been produced. However, we also find that in these collisions the molecules have a strong propensity for changing their internal state, which could make sympathetic cooling of OH in a Rb buffer gas problematic in magnetostatic or electrostatic traps.
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lara
authors.forename: John L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Bohn
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Potter
authors.forename: Pavel
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Soldán
authors.forename: Jeremy M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hutson