Eur. Phys. J. D (2019) 73: 69
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2019-90529-x

Regular Article

Inner-valence Auger decay in hydrocarbon molecules^★

¹ State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P.R. China
² Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Laboratoire de Chimie Physique Matière et Rayonnement, UMR 7614, 75005 Paris, France

^a e-mail: nicolas.sisourat@upmc.fr

Received: 29 September 2018
Received in final form: 10 December 2018
Published online: 2 April 2019

Abstract

We have theoretically studied the Auger effect after inner-valence ionization of several unsaturated and saturated cyclic and linear hydrocarbon molecules. These prototype molecules were chosen such that the effects of the different characteristics of aromaticity (π electrons, conjugation, cyclic geometry) on the Auger decay can be investigated separately. We show that among these molecules, the ones having π electrons can undergo Auger decay after inner-valence ionization. Furthermore, the results reported here suggest that conjugation allows for several open Auger decay channels while aromaticity limits the range of the latter.