Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 96
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-60703-y

Regular Article

Coherence of Auger and inter-Coulombic decay processes in the photoionization of Ar@C₆₀ versus Kr@C₆₀^*

¹ Department of Natural Sciences, D.L. Hubbard Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, Missouri 64468, USA
² Department Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, USA
³ Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation, P.O. Box 5825, Doha, Qatar

^a Current address: Department of Physics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66502, USA.
^b e-mail: himadri@nwmissouri.edu

Received: 10 December 2015
Received in final form: 14 March 2016
Published online: 21 April 2016

Abstract

For the asymmetric spherical dimer of an endohedrally confined atom and a host fullerene, an innershell vacancy of either system can decay through the continuum of an outer electron hybridized between the systems. Such decays, viewed as coherent superpositions of the single-center Auger and two-center inter-Coulombic (ICD) amplitudes, are found to govern leading decay mechanisms in noble-gas endofullerenes, and are likely omnipresent in this class of nanomolecules. A comparison between resulting autoionizing resonances calculated in the photoionization of Ar@C₆₀ and Kr@C₆₀ exhibits details of the underlying processes.