Photoassociation of a cold-atom-molecule pair: Long-range quadrupole-quadrupole interactions

The general formalism of the multipolar expansion of electrostatic interactions is applied to the calculation of the potential energy between an excited atom (without fine structure) and a ground-state diatomic molecule at large mutual separations. Both partners exhibit a permanent quadrupole moment so that their mutual long-range interaction is dominated by a quadrupole-quadrupole term, which is attractive enough to bind trimers. Numerical results are given for an excited Cs(6(2)P) atom and a ground-state Cs-2 molecule. The prospects for achieving photoassociation of a cold-atom-dimer pair are thus discussed and found promising. The formalism can be generalized to the long-range interaction between molecules to investigate the formation of cold tetramers.