Physicists observe rare resonance in molecules for the first time - Phys.org

They found that a cloud of super-cooled sodium-lithium (NaLi) molecules disappeared 100 times faster than normal when exposed to a very specific magnetic field.

"This is the very first time a resonance between two ultracold molecules has ever been seen," says study author Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT.

By varying an external magnetic field, they found they could indeed pick up several resonances amid sodium atoms and sodium-lithium molecules, which they reported last year.

Park found that the molecules seemed to disappear—a sign that the particles underwent a chemical reaction—much more quickly than they normally would, when they were exposed to a very specific magnetic field.

The effect enhanced the particles' chance of binding in a brief, intermediate complex that then triggered a reaction that made the molecules disappear.

While the team does not anticipate scientists being able to stimulate resonance, and steer reactions, at the level of organic chemistry, it could one day be possible to do so at the quantum scale.