Spontaneous electron emission from hot silver dimer anions: Breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation

• We report the first experimental evidence of spontaneous electron emission from a homonuclear dimer anion through direct measurements of Ag−2 → Ag2 + 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.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Atom- och molekylfysik och optik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Born-Oppenheimer approximation

storage ring

diatomic molecule

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