Estimates on the molecular dynamics for the predissociation process

Abstract

We study the survival probability associated with a semiclassical matrix Shrödinger operator that models the predissociation of a general molecule in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. We show that it is given by its usual time-dependent exponential contribution, up to a reminder term that is exponentially small (in the semiclassical parameter) with arbitrarily large rate of decay. The result applies in any dimension, and in presence of a number of resonances that may tend to infinity as the semiclassical parameter tends to 0.