Born-Oppenheimer potential energy for interaction of antihydrogen with molecular hydrogen

Inelastic collisions with hydrogen molecules are claimed to be an important channel of antihydrogen Hbar losses (Armour and Zeman 1999 Int. J. Quantum Chem. 74 645). In the present work, interaction energies for the H2-Hbar system in the ground state have been calculated within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The leptonic problem was solved variationally with the basis of explicitly correlated Gaussian functions. The geometry of H2 was fixed at equilibrium geometry and the Hbar atom approached the molecule from two directions-along or perpendicularly to the bond axis. Purely attractive potential energy curve has been obtained for the first nuclear configuration, while a local maximum (lower than the energy at infinite separation) has been found for the second one