DOMINANT PHOTODETACHMENT CHANNELS IN H-

Adiabatic hyperspherical potential curves are calculated for very highly excited states of H- converging to H(n12). These potential curves reveal surprisingly weak channel interactions, manifested as extremely diabatic multiple curve crossings. We demonstrate that only resonances associated with the lowest diabatic channel within each n manifold are observed in the recent experiments at Los Alamos (Harris et al.). A simple Rydberg-dipole formula gives the positions of all dominant resonances, permitting extrapolation to arbitrarily high quantum numbers. © 1990 The American Physical Society.