Experimental observation of interatomic coulombic decay in neon dimers

Recently Cederbaum et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 4778 (1997)]] predicted a new decay channel of excited atoms and molecules termed interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD). In ICD the deexcitation energy is transferred via virtual photon exchange to a neighboring atom, which releases it by electron emission. We report on an experimental observation of ICD in 2s ionized neon dimers. The process is unambiguously identified by detecting the energy of two Ne1+ fragments and the ICD electron in coincidence, yielding a clean, background free experimental spectral distribution of the ICD electrons.