Consideration of rotational tunneling in rare gas cluster ions

Abstract

Tunneling transmission coefficients through rotational barriers are investigated as a function of argon cluster ion size using the WKB approximation. The results indicate that tunneling coefficients corresponding to transmissions of a few percent, extend over time windows of ten orders of magnitude. Hence, a very broad distribution of metastable lifetimes is expected for decay of cluster ions by tunneling through rotational barriers.