Imaging the Onset of the Resonance Regime in Low-energy NO-He Collisions

At low energies, the quantum wave-like nature of molecular interactions results in distinctive scattering behavior, ranging from the universal Wigner laws near 0 kelvin to the occurrence of scattering resonances at higher energies. It has proven challenging to experimentally probe the individual waves underlying these phenomena. We report measurements of state-to-state integral and differential cross sections for inelastic NO-He collisions in the 0.2 to 8.5 centimeter range with 0.02 centimeter resolution. We studied the onset of the resonance regime by probing the lowest-lying resonance dominated by and waves only. The highly structured differential cross sections directly reflect the increasing number of contributing waves as the energy is increased. Only with CCSDT(Q) level of theory was it possible to reproduce our measurements.