Influence of thermal radiation on hot cluster decay rates and abundances

Abstract

The influence of radiative cooling on the unimolecular decay rates of free, hot clusters and molecules with unspecified excitation energies is quantified. Two different regimes, defined by the magnitude of the energy of the photons emitted, are identified and the boundary between them is given. The boundary is determined in terms of the photon emission rate constants and thermal properties of the particles. Also the abundance spectra are calculated for the continuous cooling case, corresponding to small photon energies. The two regimes correspond to continuous cooling and single photon quenching of the unimolecular decay. The radiative effect can be parametrized by a redefinition of the time each individual cluster has available to undergo evaporation, expressed by an effective radiative time constant.

Computing gold cluster energies with density functional theory: the importance of correlation

“…The agreement of the mass spectra first observed in the pioneering work of Katakuse 20 and the abundances calculated with the dissociation energies in 7 provides a satisfactory confirmation of these experimentally determined model-free values (see Ref. 21 for the comparison).…”