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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 85 » Issue 15
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3145–3148 (2000)

(MgO)n- (n = 1–5) Clusters: Multipole-Bound Anions and Photodetachment Spectroscopy

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Maciej Gutowski*
Materials Resources, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99352

Piotr Skurski
Henry Eyring Center for Theoretical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 and Department of Chemistry, University of Gdansk, 80-952 Gdansk, Poland

Xi Li and Lai-Sheng Wang†
Department of Physics, Washington State University, 2710 University Drive, Richland, Washington 99352 and Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, MS K8-88, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99352

Received 7 July 2000; published in the issue dated 9 October 2000

Photoelectron spectra of (MgO)n- (n = 1–5) reveal a surprising trend: The electron binding energy decreases from n = 1 to 4, and then increases from 4 to 5. Ab initio calculations suggest this pattern is related to the electrostatic interaction between the extra electron and the charge distribution of the neutral cluster. This interaction is significant in MgO- and (MgO)5-, for which the lowest nonvanishing multipole moment (LNM) is a dipole; it is smaller for (MgO)2- and (MgO)3-, for which a quadrupole is the LNM; and it is the smallest for (MgO)4-, for which an octopole is the LNM. The cubic (MgO)4- is the first octopole-bound anion yet observed experimentally and characterized theoretically.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.3145
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.3145
PACS:
36.40.Wa, 33.60.-q

*Corresponding authors: maciej.gutowski@pnl.gov or ls.wang@pnl.gov

†

 
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