Imaging the Rovibrational Ground State of the Helium-Neon Dimers ⁴He²⁰Ne and ⁴He²²Ne

The helium-neon dimer has been subject to many theoretical studies, in which the interaction potential of the helium-neon system has been calculated with ever increasing accuracy. Calculations predict that the helium-neon system supports only a few bound states, which makes the system inaccessible to standard spectroscopic techniques. Previous experiments have probed the helium-neon potential by comparing measured and predicted scattering cross sections. However, the spatial structure and energetics of the bound states of the helium-neon system have not been studied experimentally in great detail. We employ Coulomb explosion imaging (CEI) to measure the pair distance distributions of the helium-neon dimers ⁴He²⁰Ne and ⁴He²²Ne in their rovibrational ground state. For each dimer, the binding energy is extracted from the measured pair distance distribution. Additionally, the pair distance distribution provides access to the helium-neon potential.