title: Cold atomic collisions: coherent control of penning and associative ionization.
abstract: Coherent control techniques are computationally applied to cold (1 mK<T<1 K) and ultracold (T<1 muK) Ne*(3s,3P2)+Ar(1S0) collisions. We show that by using various initial superpositions of the Ne*(3s,3P2) M={-2,-1,0,1,2} Zeeman sublevels it is possible to reduce the Penning ionization and associative ionization cross sections by as much as 4 orders of magnitude. It is also possible to drastically change the ratio of these two processes. The results are based on combining, within the "rotating atom approximation", empirical and ab initio ionization widths.
authors.affiliation: Chemical Physics Theory Group, Department of Chemistry, and Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 3H6, Canada.
authors.forename: Carlos A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Arango
authors.forename: Moshe
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shapiro
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Brumer