Direct observation of a Feshbach resonance by coincidence detection of ions and electrons in Penning ionization collisions

Observation of molecular dynamics with quantum state resolution is one of the major challenges in chemical physics. Complete characterization of collision dynamics leads to the microscopic understanding and unraveling of different quantum phenomena such as scattering resonances. Here we present an experimental approach for observing molecular dynamics involving neutral particles and ions that is capable of providing state-to-state mapping of the dynamics. We use Penning ionization reaction between argon and metastable helium to generate argon ion and ground state helium atom pairs at separation of several angstroms. The energy of an ejected electron carries the information about the initial electronic state of an ion. The coincidence detection of ionic products provides a state resolved description of the post-ionization ion-neutral dynamics. We demonstrate that correlation between the electron and ion energy spectra enables us to directly observe the spin-orbit excited Feshbach resonance state of HeAr(+). We measure the lifetime of the quasi-bound HeAr(+) A(2) state and discuss possible applications of our method.