On electronic shells surrounding charged insulated metallic clusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates the electronic structure of charged metallic clusters with insulating layers, revealing resonance effects that cause significant variations in electron lifetimes from seconds to years.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed quantum mechanical model of electron wavefunctions around charged metallic clusters with insulating shells, highlighting resonance phenomena affecting electron decay lifetimes.

Findings

Resonance behavior significantly influences electron decay rates.

Electron lifetimes can vary from seconds to years based on cluster parameters.

Wavefunctions of electrons are explicitly determined for these systems.

Abstract

We determine the wavefunctions of electrons bound to a positively charged mesoscopic metallic cluster covered by an insulating surface layer. The radius of the metal core and the thickness of the insulating surface layer are of the order of a couple of angstroems. We study in particular the electromagnetic decay of externally located electrons into unoccupied internally located states which exhibits a resonance behaviour. This resonance structure has the consequence that the lifetime of the `mesoscopic atoms' may vary by up to 6 orders of magnitude depending on the values of the parameters (from sec to years).