Spontaneous Electron Emission from Hot Silver Dimer Anions: Breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation.

Autor: Anderson EK; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Schmidt-May AF; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.; Institut für Ionenphysik und Angewandte Physik, Universität Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria., Najeeb PK; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Eklund G; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Chartkunchand KC; Atomic, Optical, and Molecular Physics Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan., Rosén S; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Larson Å; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Hansen K; Center for Joint Quantum Studies and Department of Physics, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, China.; Department of Physics, University of Gothenburg, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden., Cederquist H; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Zettergren H; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden., Schmidt HT; Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Physical review letters [Phys Rev Lett] 2020 May 01; Vol. 124 (17), pp. 173001.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.173001
Abstrakt: We report the first experimental evidence of spontaneous electron emission from a homonuclear dimer anion through direct measurements of Ag_{2}^{-}→Ag_{2}+e^{-} decays on milliseconds and seconds timescales. This observation is very surprising as there is no avoided crossing between adiabatic energy curves to mediate such a process. The process is weak, yet dominates the decay signal after 100 ms when ensembles of internally hot Ag_{2}^{-} ions are stored in the cryogenic ion-beam storage ring, DESIREE, for 10 s. The electron emission process is associated with an instantaneous, very large reduction of the vibrational energy of the dimer system. This represents a dramatic deviation from a Born-Oppenheimer description of dimer dynamics.
Databáze: MEDLINE