A measurement of the evolution of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in the time domain

TL;DR

This paper presents the first direct measurement of the time evolution of Interatomic Coulombic Decay (ICD), revealing its complex dynamics and dependence on atomic distances using a novel experimental method.

Contribution

It introduces a new experimental approach to directly measure the temporal evolution of ICD, advancing understanding of its dynamics.

Findings

First direct measurement of ICD time evolution

Demonstrates dependence of ICD on atomic distances

Reveals complex temporal behavior of ICD

Abstract

During the last 15 years a novel decay mechanism of excited atoms has been discovered and investigated. This so called ''Interatomic Coulombic Decay'' (ICD) involves the chemical environment of the electronically excited atom: the excitation energy is transferred (in many cases over long distances) to a neighbor of the initially excited particle usually ionizing that neighbor. It turned out that ICD is a very common decay route in nature as it occurs across van-der-Waals and hydrogen bonds. The time evolution of ICD is predicted to be highly complex, as its efficiency strongly depends on the distance of the atoms involved and this distance typically changes during the decay. Here we present the first direct measurement of the temporal evolution of ICD using a novel experimental approach.