Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 32: Awards Symposium I (SYAW 1)

A 32.2: Prize Talk

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 14:30–15:00, Kinosaal

A measurement of the evolution of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in the time domain — •Till Jahnke — Institut für Kernphysik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt, Germany — Laureate of the Gustav-Hertz-Prize

Interatomic (or intermolecular) Coulombic Decay (ICD) has become an extensively studied atomic decay process during the last 10 years. In ICD an excited atom or molecule deexcites by transferring its excitation energy to a loosely bound atomic neighbor and leads to the emission of an electron from that neighbor. Originally proposed by Cederbaum et al. [1] it was first experimentally observed by two groups using different techniques [2,3]. Since that time a wealth of experimental and theoretical studies have shown that ICD is a rather common decay path in nature, as it occurs almost everywhere in loosely bound matter.

ICD is predicted to have a highly complex temporal behavior. The efficiency and thus the decay times of ICD depend strongly on the size of the system, i.e. the number of neighboring particles and the distance between them and the excited particle. However, even for most simple model systems consisting of only two atoms the temporal evolution of the decay is non-trivial: as ICD happens on a timescale that is fast compared to relaxation via photon emission, but comparable to the typical times of nuclear motion in the system, the dynamics of the decay is complicated and so far only theoretically explored. Here we present an experimental study resolving ICD in helium dimers (He2) in the time domain [4].

The talk will give a short introduction on ICD and show experimental investigations separating different contributions to the ICD transition matrix element [5]. The final part of the talk will show our time resolved studies of the dynamics of the nuclei of the decaying dimer and give a brief view on possible future applications of ICD [6].

[1] Cederbaum, L. S., Zobeley, J., and Tarantelli, F., Phys. Rev. Lett., 79, 4778 (1997).

[2] Marburger, S., Kugeler, O., Hergenhahn, U., and Möller, T., Phys. Rev. Lett., 93, 203401 (2003).

[3] Jahnke, T., Czasch, A., Schöffler, M. S., Schössler, S., Knapp, A. Käsz, M., Titze, J., Wimmer, C., Kreidi, K., Grisenti, R. E., Staudte, A., Jagutzki, O., Hergenhahn, U., Schmidt-Böcking, H., and Dörner, R., Phys. Rev. Lett., 93, 163401 (2004).

[4] F. Trinter J. B. Williams, M. Weller, M. Waitz, M. Pitzer, J. Voigtsberger, C. Schober, G. Kastirke, C. Müller, C. Goihl, P. Burzynski, F. Wiegandt, T. Bauer, R. Wallauer, H. Sann, A. Kalinin, L. Ph. H. Schmidt, M. Schöffler, N. Sisourat, and T. Jahnke, Phys. Rev. Lett., 111, 093401 (2013)

[5] T. Jahnke, A. Czasch, M. Schöffler, S. Schössler, M. Käsz, J. Titze, K. Kreidi, R. E. Grisenti, A. Staudte, O. Jagutzki, L. Ph. H. Schmidt, Th. Weber, H. Schmidt-Böcking, K. Ueda, and R. Dörner., Phys. Rev. Lett., 99, 153401 (2007)

[6] F. Trinter, M. S. Schöffler, H.-K. Kim, F. Sturm, K. Cole, N. Neumann, A. Vredenborg, J. Williams, I. Bocharova, R. Guillemin, M. Simon, A. Belkacem, A. L. Landers, Th. Weber, H. Schmidt-Böcking, R. Dörner, and T. Jahnke, doi:10.1038/nature12927, Nature (2013)