Hollow atoms: The consequences of an underestimated effectThe…

Hollow atoms: The consequences of an underestimated effectThe…

Hollow atoms: The consequences of an underestimated effect

The “hollow atoms,” which are being produced in the labs of TU Wien (Vienna) are quite exotic objects. Their electrons are in a state of extremely high energy (so called Rydberg states), but when they are shot through another material, they can get rid of this energy in a matter of femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second).

For a long time, physicists have been speculating how this process can be so fast. Experiments with xenon ions and graphene have now shown that the reason is an effect which has been hugely underestimated: the so-called “interatomic coulomb decay.” Studying this effect is not only important for atomic physics, but also for our health: when biological material is irradiated, the interatomic coulomb decay can fracture DNA molecules. These results have now been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Hollow Atoms

Extreme environments are created in the labs at TU Wien. In an ion trap, large amounts of energy are used to rip a great number of electrons out of their atoms, leaving highly charged ions behind. When such an ion is fired onto a surface, it regains its electrons, pulling them away from the surface. These new electrons, however, have very high energies. They occupy the outer electron shells, far away from the atomic nucleus – whereas in a normal atom, the electrons tend to occupy the innermost electron shells, where their energy is low. An atom, in which many electrons are located in the outer electron shells while many inner electron states are empty, is called a “hollow atom.”

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