The energy splittings of the lithiumlike ions , , and have been measured at the Experimental Storage Ring, utilizing low energy dielectronic recombination. The resonance energies in total 41 different () autoionizing Rydberg states populated in the dielectronic capture process have been determined. The excitation energies have been obtained by extrapolation of these resonance energies to the associated series limits . The combined analysis of the experimental data for all three ions yields for , 230.650(81) eV for , and 280.516(99) eV for .
Neutral is well known to exhibit a giant resonance in its photon absorption spectrum near 20 eV. This is associated with a surface plasmon, where delocalized electrons oscillate as a whole relative to the ionic cage. Absolute photoionization cross-section measurements for , , and ions in the 17–75 eV energy range show an additional resonance near 40 eV. Time-dependent density functional calculations confirm the collective nature of this feature, which is characterized as a dipole-excited volume plasmon made possible by the special fullerene geometry.
12 September 2016 in The European Physical Journal Special Topics