A DICP paper with the title of "Probing the resonance potential in the F atom reaction with hydrogen deuteride with spectroscopic accuracy" and written by Prof. YANG Xueming and Prof. ZHANG Donghui et al. was adopted as the cover article by the journal of PNAS(Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, USA) issued this week(PNAS 105, 12662(2008)). This was the second paper from the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Dynamics of DICP to be published in the PNAS this year. The first one was published in April.

In this work, the DICP team, by using a home-made cross molecular beam - hydrogen atom Rydberg state tagging installation, obtained for the first time reaction differential cross sections with a full quantum state resolution and under varying collision energies for the F+HD->HF+D reaction. They also observed experimentally that within a reaction energy range of 0.3 kcal/mol, the differential cross section of the reaction changed drastically. This experimental investigation has attained a spectral precision (a few cm-1) in kinetic studies which has never been reached so far, thus providing a very scarce experimental basis for high-precision theoretical researches.

This paper was published in PNAS as part of the "Chemical Dynamics Special Feature" monograph. Prof. Crim, editor of the monograph and Academician of NAS, remarked on this paper that both experimental observation and theoretical calculation for chemical reaction resonance states are very challenging tasks, and this work on

The reaction of F+HD illustrated the huge power exerted by the combination of experimental and theoretical approaches for the exploration of precise potential surface of reactions.