Modelization of the fragmentation dynamics of krypton clusters (Krn,n=2–11) following electron impact ionization

International audienceWe present the first prediction for the fragmentation dynamics following electron impact ionization of neutral krypton clusters from 2 to 11 atoms. Fragment proportions and parent ion lifetimes are deduced from a molecular dynamics with quantum transitions study in which the nuclei are treated classically and the transitions between electronic states quantum mechanically. The potential-energy surfaces are derived from a diatomics-in-molecules model to which induced dipole-induced dipole and spin-orbit interactions are added. The results show surprisingly fast and extensive fragmentation for clusters of such a heavy atom, although not as extensive as in the case of neon clusters studied previously [D. Bonhommeau et al., J. Chem. Phys. 123, 54316 (2005)]. The parent ion lifetimes range from 2.8 to 0.7ps, and the most abundant fragment is Kr+2 for all studied sizes, followed by Kr+ for sizes smaller than 7 atoms and by Kr+3 for larger sizes. Trimer and larger fragments are found to originate from the lower electronic states of parent ions. The comparison with preliminary results from experiments on size-selected neutral clusters conducted by Steinbach et al. (private communication) reveal a good agreement on the extensive character of the fragmentation. It is checked that the additional internal energy brought by the helium scattering technique used for size selection does not affect the fragment proportions. In addition, the existence of long-lived trajectories is revealed, and they are found to be more and more important for larger cluster sizes and to favor the stabilization of larger fragments. The implications of this work for microsecond-scale dynamics of ionized rare-gas clusters are discussed. In particular, given the extent of fragmentation of the parent clusters and the fast kinetics of the whole process, the small cluster ions that exhibit a monomer loss in the microsecond time window must originate from much larger neutral precursors. The decay rate of the II(1∕2)u state of the ionic dimer Kr+2 by spin-orbit coupling is found to be of the order of 3ps3ps, in contrast to the expected tens of microseconds, but only reasonably faster than the corresponding state of HeNe+. Finally, the spin-orbit interaction strongly affects both the Kr+/Kr+2 ratio and some of the characteristic times of the dynamics, especially for smaller sizes, but not the overall dependence of the fragment proportions as a function of cluster size