Metastable decay of ionic argon clusters: rotational predissociation of (Ar)4+ Original Research Article

A fully anisotropic potential energy surface (PES) is constructed for the ground electronic state of the (Ar)4+ system in order to analyse the interaction of the Ar3+ core with a residual argon atom. Using the highly anisotropic PES found in this case, we carry out a detailed analysis of the consequences of energy storing in the rotational degrees of freedom of the core on the quantum fragmentation of the full system. We find that such process provides a highly efficient break-up channel until the overall rotational temperature of the cluster manages to block the lower levels of metastability into slow-decaying states of the full cluster. The effect of such findings on the general modelling of cluster metastability is also analysed and discussed.