Electronic Decay of Singly Charged Ground-State Ions by Charge Transfer via van der Waals Bonds

Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Nov 22;123(21):213001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.213001.

Abstract

We report the observation of the radiative decay of singly charged noble gas ground-state ions embedded in heterogeneous van der Waals clusters. Electron-photon coincidence spectroscopy and dispersed photon spectroscopy are applied to identify the radiative charge transfer from Kr atoms to a Ne_{2}^{+} dimer, which forms after single valence photoionization of Ne atoms at the surface of a NeKr cluster. This mechanism might be a fundamental decay process of ionized systems in an environment.