Electronic decay through carbon chains

Using the multielectron wave-packet propagation method the electronic decay of O2s vacancy in fluorinated cumulenones, OCnF2, containing a chain of up to five carbons is traced in time and space. It is shown that in all studied cases this state decays non-locally by emitting an electron from the remote fluorines. Even in the pentatetraenone case, where the oxygen and the flourines are more than 7 Å apart, this non-local decay is extremely efficient, with a time constant of about 5 fs. The process can be viewed as an ultrafast energy transfer through the carbon chain and thus our systematic study allows to shed some light on the dependence of the time scale of the electron-correlation driven energy transfer through a medium.

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