1. Autodetachment of diatomic carbon anions from long-lived high-rotation quartet states
- Author
-
Schmidt, Viviane C., Čurík, Roman, Ončák, Milan, Blaum, Klaus, George, Sebastian, Göck, Jürgen, Grieser, Manfred, Grussie, Florian, von Hahn, Robert, Krantz, Claude, Kreckel, Holger, Novotný, Oldřich, Spruck, Kaija, and Wolf, Andreas
- Subjects
Physics - Chemical Physics - Abstract
Highly excited C$_2{}^{-}$ ions prominently feature electron detachment at a mean decay time near 3 milliseconds with hitherto unexplained origin. Considering various sources of unimolecular decay, we attribute the signal to the electronic C$^4\Sigma^+_u$ state. Quartet C$_2{}^{-}$ levels are found to be stabilized against autodetachment by high rotation. Time constants of their rotationally assisted autodetachment into levels opening energetically at lower rotation are calculated by a theory based on the non-local resonance model. For some final levels of significantly less rotation the results conclusively explain the puzzling observations., Comment: This is a letter of a joint submission aimed to Phys. Rev. Lett. with a companion paper in Phys. Rev. A. The title of the companion paper is: "Unimolecular processes in diatomic carbon anions at high rotational excitation"
- Published
- 2024