Figure 6.

Binding lifetimes as a function of the energy perturbation parameter δ starting from the fully bound state (a) and from the initial contact state (b). The two plots differ primarily in the vertical scale. This is because the initial contact lifetime is an average of event where the molecules proceed to the fully bound state and events where the molecules unbind almost immediately (on the nanosecond timescale). These averages are dominated by the fully bound states. For large values of |δ| all four sequences have lifetimes that are increasing function of |δ| because the weakly bound sites are net repulsive and contribute minimally to the binding lifetime. ε₀ = 0.5, L = 20