Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 22: Electron scattering and recombination I

A 22.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 14:00–14:30, BAR 106

Influence of two-center electronic correlations on atomic processes — •Carsten Müller, Alexander B. Voitkiv, Bennaceur Najjari, Jose R. Crespo Lopez-Urrutia, and Zoltan Harman — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg

When an atom is not isolated in space but close to another atom, the electronic structures at the two centers can be coupled by long-range electromagnetic interactions causing a variety of interesting phenomena. In particular, electron-ion recombination may proceed resonantly via excitation of an electron in a neighboring atom, which subsequently deexcites by photo-emission [1]. Using examples from different fields of physics, we demonstrate that this two-center dielectronic process can largely dominate over single-center radiative recombination at interatomic distances as large as several nanometers.

The corresponding time-reversed process is two-center resonant photo-ionization, where one of the reaction pathways for ionization is radiationless transfer of excitation from a neighboring atom (so-called interatomic Coulombic decay). Characteristic features are shown to arise in this process, both in its temporal development and the spectrum of emitted electrons [2].

[1] C. Müller, A.B. Voitkiv, J.R. Crespo López-Urrutia, Z. Harman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 233202 (2010)

[2] B. Najjari, A.B. Voitkiv, C. Müller, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 153002 (2010)