APPLICATIONS OF THE DISCRETE VARIABLE REPRESENTATION (DVR) FOR MODELING ENERGY LEVELS OF ALKALI DIMER MOLECULES

Author Institution: Department of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York,; Stony Brook, New York 11794-3800This will be a brief review of recent work in which DVR methods have been used to model spectroscopic data on various alkali dimer states. Many collaborators have contributed experimental data for studies on K$_{2}$ ($A \ ^{1}\Sigma_{u}^{+}$ and $b \ ^{3}\Pi_{u}$); RbCs ($A \ ^{1}\Sigma^{+}$, $b \ ^{3}\Pi$, $c \ ^{3}\Sigma_{u}$ and $B \ ^{1}\Pi$, for which more data would be helpful!); Rb$_{2}$ ($0_{u}^{+}$ dissociating to $5^{2}S+5^{2}P$); Na$_{2}$ ($A$ and $b$ states again) and Cs$_{2}$ ($a \ ^{3}\Sigma_{u}^{+}$). The motivation has been to model photoassociation of laser-cooled atoms, to design routes for the production of ultracold molecules and to identify ``window states'' for stepwise excitation to higher triplet states. DVR has been useful for fitting data on mutually perturbing electronic states directly to analytic potentials plus spin-orbit or hyperfine interactions