Electronic and Nuclear Relaxation Of Core-Excited Molecules

Abstract

Ionization and dissociation of core-excited molecules is a subject intimately related to the problem of the relaxation of the inner vacancy and the coupling to nuclear motion. For molecules built with light atoms, the Auger decay rate dominates largely the x-ray fluorescence rate and so we will concentrate on the effect of ejection of several electrons through Auger-like processes. In contrast to atoms, molecules which are stripped of several outer valence electrons through core excitation, lose their integrity and are efficiently destroyed because many electrons which form the cement of the chemical bonds are removed. In other words, the dissociation efficiency, defined as the number of broken bonds over the total number of bonds in the original molecule, is high and may reach unity (a full “atomization” of the system) for a number of molecules of small or medium size.