Thermionic power-law decay of excited aluminum-cluster anions and its dependence on storage-device temperature

The decay of excited aluminum-cluster anions (Aln-, n=4 and 5) has been investigated in a cryogenic linear ion-beam trap. A power-law is found to accurately reproduce the time dependence of the observed decay rates at early storage times, although the exponents are significantly larger than the typically observed 1/t decay. It is shown that the power-law exponent is, at most, weakly dependent on the cluster electron affinity and heat capacity. A previous power-law exponent model for small clusters is also shown to be in disagreement with both investigated species. The attribution of a drop in the decay rate at later times to radiative cooling as observed in larger molecules also does not appear justified in our case. A strong dependence of the power-law exponent on the ambient temperature was observed.