1. Coulomb barriers in the dissociation of doubly charged clusters
- Author
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José Manuel López, Manuel Barranco, Julio A. Alonso, Francesca Garcias, and Universitat de Barcelona
- Subjects
Physics ,Condensed matter physics ,Fission ,Jellium ,Evaporation ,Teoria del funcional de densitat ,Microclusters ,Molecular physics ,Dissociation (chemistry) ,Ion ,Ionization ,Physics::Atomic and Molecular Clusters ,Density functional theory ,Rectangular potential barrier ,Microagregats ,Thomas–Fermi model - Abstract
The barrier height for the most asymmetric fission decay of doubly charged sodium clusters (Na_N^2+) into singly ionized fragments has been computed with use of density-functional theory and the jellium model. We have found that the barrier is sizable for large or intermediate-size clusters, but vanishes for N40 and, in this case, monomer evaporation becomes competitive. The critical cluster size, N_c=40, for the transition from one decay mode to the other is in reasonable agreement with the experimental result. Our calculations suggest that the mechanism for neutralmonomer evaporation is different from the one currently assumed.
- Published
- 1991
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