Quantized losses from charged nitrogen clusters.

Metastable decay of (N), formed in a supersonic jet and ionized by electron impact, has been analyzed for n≤50. The probability for decay of (N) into (N), plotted versus x, exhibits pronounced oscillations. The 'period' of these oscillations increases with increasing precursor size n, but converges to an average value of approximately 4.7 beyond n=25. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]