Influence of vibrational motion and temperature on interatomic Coulombic electron capture

Abstract

Interatomic Coulombic electron capture (ICEC) is an environment-mediated process in which a free electron attaches to a species by transferring excess energy to a neighbor. While previous theoretical investigations assumed fixed nuclei, recent studies indicate that nuclear dynamics significantly influences the ICEC process. In this work, we incorporate the vibrational motion into an analytical model of the ICEC cross section, including both energy and electron transfer. To validate this approach, we compare the results to the adiabatic-nuclei approximation based on fixed-nuclei ab initio R-matrix calculations. We apply our theory to the helium–neon dimer, which is ideal for studying diverse dynamical effects. We show that while vibrational dynamics can slightly reduce ICEC efficiency, ICEC remains dominant over photorecombination and can trigger dimer dissociation. Accounting for the nuclear motion also enables to describe the broadening of the electron spectrum and enables evaluation of temperature-dependent cross sections—capabilities beyond the reach of fixed-nuclei approaches.