Impact of the strong force on the Coulombic decay of a hydrogen–antihydrogen molecule

The lifetime of the meta-stable hydrogen-antihydrogen molecule in various vibrational states is calculated. The partial lifetime with respect to the proton-antiproton annihilation is obtained from complex eigenvalues which arise upon inclusion of the strong force in the adiabatic formulation of the molecular decay problem. We study the influence of the strong force, which causes annihilation, on the transition probability for decay via Coulombic rearrangement to protonium and positronium.