Single Photon Thermal Ionization of C_{60}

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Mar 10;118(10):103001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.103001. Epub 2017 Mar 8.

Abstract

We report on experiments which show that C_{60} can ionize in an indirect, quasithermal boiloff process after absorption of a single photon. The process involves a large number of incoherently excited valence electrons and yields electron spectra with a Boltzmann distribution with temperatures exceeding 10^{4} K. It is expected to be present for other molecules and clusters with a comparatively large number of valence electrons. The astrophysical consequences are briefly discussed.