Photodetachment and Tunneling Dissociation of Cryogenic Double-Rydberg Anions NH4

Rui Zhang; Jiayi Chen; Shuaiting Yan; Wenru Jie; Chuangang Ning

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c01168

Photodetachment and Tunneling Dissociation of Cryogenic Double-Rydberg Anions NH₄

J Phys Chem Lett. 2024 May 30;15(21):5612-5617. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c01168. Epub 2024 May 17.

Authors

Rui Zhang¹, Jiayi Chen¹, Shuaiting Yan¹, Wenru Jie¹, Chuangang Ning¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.

PMID: 38758204
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c01168

Abstract

The Rydberg radical NH₄ and the double Rydberg anion (DRA) NH₄^- have long aroused researchers' interests due to their potential for exploring the reaction dynamics of the H + NH₃ → H₂ + NH₂ reaction, a prototypical penta-atomic system. In this study, we present high-resolution photodetachment spectroscopy of DRA NH₄^- and ion-molecule complex H^-(NH₃). We observed multiple new photodetachment channels of DRA NH₄^-. The energy level of the excited state (3p ²T₂) of the Rydberg radical NH₄ was determined to be 15052(94) cm^-1, in excellent agreement with the principal Schüler band (15061.61 cm^-1). Additionally, we observed the tunneling dissociation of NH₄^- in a cryogenic ion trap with its dissociation lifetime determined to be 19(2) ms.