Focus on the cold and ultracold chemistry of atoms, ions and molecules

Understanding and controlling the interactions of matter at cold and ultracold temperatures is of paramount importance in several fields of contemporary physics and beyond. Recent progress has helped shedding light onto central questions, such as how particles interact in a regime in which quantum effects significantly contribute or even dominate the interparticle interactions, and how this new insight can be used to advance applications, such as quantum chemistry, precision measurements, fundamental physics, quantum simulation and quantum information processing (QIP). For this research, different systems are used including atomic and molecular ensembles, as well as hybrid systems, such as ion-atom mixtures. This focus issue puts a spotlight on recent advances in the field of cold and ultracold chemistry. The original contributions to this issue [1–22] represent a broad spectrum of experimental and theoretical work in this truly interdisciplinary research area at the interface between physics and chemistry. Core research questions in this issue revolve around the study and control of cold and ultracold collisions involving atoms, molecules and ions. Apart from that, also the efficient production of cold and ultracold molecules remains a hot topic. In the following, we put these advances into perspective.