Molecular beam studies of weak interactions for open-shell systems: The ground and lowest excited states of ArF, KrF, and XeF

Absolute integral cross sections for scattering of ground state fluorine atoms by argon, krypton, and xenon have been measured in the thermal velocity range. Information has been obtained on the long range interaction and using a technique for magnetic analysis of substates of F atoms, a characterization is given for the bonding in the ground and the two lowest excited states of these rare gas fluorides. The potentials are represented as a spherical part and an anisotropic component, which have been obtained in an adiabatic decoupling treatment, including also information from other scattering data. Nonadiabatic coupling matrix elements and other general features of these interactions are also presented.