Because ICD is expected to take place universally in weakly bound aggregates containing light atoms between carbon and neon in the periodic table 2,3 , these results could have implications for our understanding of ionization damage in living tissues. NPHYS-2009-06-00979a 2 Electronic vacancy states can be produced in matter by ionizing radiation, such as X-ray photons or fast charged particles. When a state with a high electronic excitation energy has been produced by impact of such particles, electron correlation can cause the ejection of electrons. Auger decay is the best known representative of this class of secondary processes that is more generally termed autoionization. In other words, the mechanism is a concerted transition in which a single hole in an inner shell is replaced by two vacancies in the outer valence shells of two adjacent molecules, and a free electron. This decay channel was termed Intermolecular (Interatomic, in the case of atomic clusters) Coulombic Decay and was subsequently observed in rare gas clusters 4-7 .The process is shown schematically in Fig. 1. A resonant variant of ICD, which may take place after photoexcitation into an unoccupied orbital, has also been discussed [7][8][9] . In the present paper, we consider ICD of inner valence vacancy states, for which case the ejected electrons have a low kinetic energy.On the basis of energetic considerations, ICD can take place whenever the binding energy of the ionized state lies above the double ionization threshold of the corresponding cluster or liquid. This prerequisite for ICD is fulfilled in hydrogen-bonded systems 2,10 , but so far the process has not been seen. Calculations of the energy spectrum of electrons ejected by ICD of small water clusters give a hint as to why it has escaped observation: A broad, rather unstructured distribution of energies is expected, which peaks at zero eV 10 . Ifwe consider an experiment with a conventional electron energy analyser on a bulk or liquid NPHYS-2009-06-00979a 3 sample, an electron spectrum with this shape can hardly be distinguished from the "universal curve" 1 for secondary electrons (Fig. 2). In this respect our work differs from earlier experiments, which were either restricted to dimers 5-7 , or dealt with simpler cases where an ICD feature appears from simple electron kinetic energy spectra 4,8,9 . Producing primary electrons of a well-defined energy by photoionization and detecting them in coincidence with the ICD electron has allowed us to overcome the aforementioned problem. Here, we demonstrate that ICD follows the photoionization of medium-sized water clusters and show that -above the corresponding photoionization threshold -ICD electrons make an important contribution to the low kinetic energy spectrum.In our experiment, a jet of water clusters with a mean size 〈N〉 of 40 or 200 was used.Such clusters are believed to form amorphous structures, which resemble the hydrogenbonded network of liquid water rather than that of crystalline ice 11 . Inner valence vacancies were p...

A quantitative determination of 2s vacancy lifetimes in surface and bulk atoms of free Ne clusters has been made. While for free atoms the 2s inner-valence hole has a ps lifetime, it reduces to 6+/-1 fs for cluster bulk atoms. For surface atoms, the lifetime is on average longer than 30 fs. The lifetime estimate was obtained from fits of high-resolution photoelectron spectra of Ne clusters. The shortening of the lifetime is attributed to the coordination dependent interatomic Coulombic decay, which is extremely sensitive to internuclear distances.

The valence photoelectron spectra of water clusters are studied experimentally and by ab initio calculations. The size dependence of the vertical ionization energy of the outermost orbitals is explicitly shown. A shift toward lower values is observed. For small cluster sizes, it can be rationalized as an effect of charge delocalization as the system is becoming more extended. Ionization energies of larger clusters decrease linearly with inverse cluster radius and asymptotically approach the value of liquid water. In the calculations, we apply a reflection principle approach based on sampling a quantum mechanical distribution of different initial-state geometries to clusters. An excellent agreement of peak shapes calculated thus with measured ones is shown. Using additional polarization fields, the extension of this approach to the photoionization of liquid water is demonstrated. Upon deuteration of the water clusters, we experimentally and theoretically find slightly larger absolute values of the vertical ionization energies. We suggest that the measurement of electron ionization energies can be used as an alternative means to characterize water cluster sizes, which can complement the use of scaling laws.

Measurements made with a dilute, non-oriented, gas-phase sample of a selected fenchone enantiomer using circularly polarized synchrotron radiation demonstrate huge chiral asymmetries, approaching 20%, in the angular distribution of photoelectrons ejected from carbonyl C 1s core orbitals. This asymmetry in the forward-backward scattering of electrons along the direction of the incident soft X-ray radiation reverses when either the enantiomer or the left-right handedness of the light polarization is exchanged. Calculations are provided that model and explain the resulting photoelectron circular dichroism with quantitative accuracy up to approximately 7 eV above threshold. A discrepancy at higher energies is discussed in the light of a comparison with the closely related terpene, camphor. The photoelectron dichroism spectrum can be used to identify the absolute chiral configuration, and it is more effective at distinguishing the similar camphor and fenchone molecules than the corresponding core photoelectron spectrum.

We have measured the electron spectra of Ne clusters after excitation with photon energies around the 2s inner valence threshold. At two photon energies below threshold, a resonantly enhanced surplus of low kinetic-energy electrons is observed. The kinetic energy of the peak does not vary with the photon energy and is slightly larger than the transition energy of Interatomic Coulombic Decay (ICD) above threshold. This leads us to assume that an ICD-like process is present. In analogy to the Auger and the resonant Auger decay this new phenomenon is termed resonant ICD.

Clusters formed by a coexpansion process of argon and neon have been studied using synchrotron radiation. Electrons from interatomic Coulombic decay as well as ultraviolet and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to determine the heterogeneous nature of the clusters and the cluster structure. Binary clusters of argon and neon produced by coexpansion are shown to exhibit a core-shell structure placing argon in the core and neon in the outer shells. Furthermore, the authors show that 2 ML of neon on the argon core is sufficient for neon valence band formation resembling the neon solid. For 1 ML of neon the authors observe a bandwidth narrowing to about half of the bulk value.

The inner-shell C 1s photoionization of randomly oriented molecules of the chiral compound carvone has been investigated using circularly polarized synchrotron radiation up to 30 eV above threshold. Binding energies of the C=O and CH2= carbon 1s orbitals were determined to be 292.8+/-0.2 and 289.8+/-0.2 eV, respectively. The remaining C-H C 1s levels substantially overlap under an intense central peak centered at 290.5+/-0.2 eV. The angle-resolved photoemission from the carbonyl carbon C=O core orbital in pure carvone enantiomers shows a pronounced circular dichroism of approximately 6% at the magic angle of 54.7 degrees to the light beam propagation direction. This corresponds to an expected 0 degrees -180 degrees forward-backward electron emission asymmetry of approximately 10%. On changing between the R and S enantiomers of carvone the sense or sign of the asymmetry and associated dichroism effectively reverses. The observed circular dichroism, and its energy dependence, is well accounted for by calculations performed in the pure electric dipole approximation.

In this article, we demonstrate that Interatomic Coulombic Decay (ICD) is the dominant relaxation channel of Ne 2s inner valence vacancies in free Ne clusters, with an efficiency close to 100 %. ICD designates a novel autoionization process of a vacancy in a weakly bonded atomic or molecular cluster. Its main characteristic is the release of an electron from a site different than the original vacancy, which is mediated by ultrafast energy transfer. Results are shown for cluster sizes between approx. 50-600 atoms. A trend towards apparently increased efficiency for larger clusters may result from inelastic scattering processes inside the cluster.