Interatomic and intermolecular Coulombic decay: the coming of age story

Abstract

In pioneering work by Cederbaum et al an excitation mechanism was proposed that occurs only in loosely bound matter (Cederbaum et al 1997 Phys. Rev. Lett. 79 4778): it turned out, that (in particular) in cases where a local Auger decay is energetically forbidden, an excited atom or molecule is able to decay in a scheme which was termed 'interatomic Coulombic decay' (or 'intermolecular Coulombic decay') (ICD). As ICD occurs, the excitation energy is released by transferring it to an atomic or molecular neighbor of the initially excited particle. As a consequence the neighboring atom or molecule is ionized as it receives the energy. A few years later the existence of ICD was confirmed experimentally (

Strong field control of the interatomic Coulombic decay process in quantum dots

“…Nowadays the interatomic Coulombic decay is recognized as a highlyefficient elementary process in numerous physical and chemical systems [3,4].…”

“…[1] -this slogan summarizes the nearly twenty years of success history of the ultrafast interatomic (intermolecular) Coulombic decay (ICD) process from its first theoretical prediction by Cederbaum, Zobeley, and Tarantelli [2] to its widespread theoretical and experimental observation [3,4] in various atomic and molecular systems including clusters of noble gas atoms [5,6,7,8], endohedral fullerenes [9,10,11], aqueous solutions [12,13,14,15,16,17], biological systems [18,19,20,21,22,23], and nanomaterials [24,25,26] just to name a few.…”

“…The decaying resonance excited state is typically prepared by either inner-valence ionization [3,4,27], resonant excitation [28,29,30,31], electron [4,32,33,34,35,36], or ion impact [4,37].…”

Time-resolved electron(e,2e)momentum spectroscopy: Application to laser-driven electron population transfer in atoms

“…Studies of time-resolved electron dynamics in various atomic, molecular, and condensed-matter reactions have increased over the past two decades [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] owing to experimental progress in generating ultrashort and/or intense pulses of extreme ultraviolet light [8,9], x rays [10,11], and electrons [12,13]. These advances open the possibility of obtaining a deeper understanding of physical and chemical reaction mechanisms.…”

A comprehensive study of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in argon dimers: Extracting R-dependent absolute decay rates from the experiment

“…Followup studies during the recent years showed that ICD is not an exotic process, but rather a very common decay route in the nature as it occurs after excitation by photons [2][3][4], electrons [5], and ions [6] and in differently bound systems from van der Waals clusters such as the extreme case of He 2 [7] to systems consisting of hydrogen bonds such as water [8,9]. An experimentalist point of view review of the "early years of ICD" can be found in [10] and of more recent studies in [11]. Two comprehensive theoretical review papers by Santra et al [12] and Averbukh et al [13] are available, as well.…”