Collisional quenching of metastable states of antiprotonic helium by hydrogen and deuterium molecules

The quenching of metastable states of antiprotonic helium by collisions with hydrogen and deuterium molecules was studied. A systematic investigation of the delayed annihilation time spectra at various H₂ and D₂ admixture ratios at the ppm level revealed characteristic changes of their shape, which indicated a strong principal and orbital quantum number dependent quenching of levels in both cases. Applying a laser spectroscopy technique to measure the lifetimes of individual states and cascades we deduced H₂ and D₂ quenching cross-sections for the states (n, l) = (39,35) and (37,34). These cross-sections establish for D₂ molecules the strong increase of the quenching efficiency with increasing principal quantum number n of the state under investigation previously reported for the case of H₂ admixtures. Our experiments indicate that the low-n state (37,34) is somewhat less affected by D₂ than by H₂. while the high-n state (39, 35) is equally quenched by both isotopes.