Cold Chemistry ― Molecular Scattering and Reactivity Near Absolute Zero

Recent years have seen tremendous progress in research on cold and controlled molecular collisions, both in theory and in experiment. The advent of techniques to prepare cold and ultracold molecules and ions, to store them in optical lattices or in charged quasicristalline structures, and to use them in crossed or merged beam experiments have opened many new possibilities to study the most fundamental aspects of molecular interactions. At the same time, theoretical work has made progress in tackling these problems and accurately describing quantum effects in complex systems, and in proposing viable options to control chemical reactions at ultralow energies. Through tutorials on both the theoretical and experimental aspects of research in cold and ultracold molecular collisions, this book provides advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers with the foundations needed to understand this exciting field.

Andreas Osterwalder is a Senior Scientist at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, where he leads a team working on developing a merged beam technique to study neutral chemical reactions below 1K.
Olivier Dulieu is Research Director at Laboratoire Aime Cotton, CNRS, France. His research interests include the theory of structure and dynamics of cold and ultracold neutral and ionic molecules, quantum chemistry, molecular spectroscopy and field-assisted dynamics.