Electronic ground state of Ni2

V Zamudio-Bayer; R Lindblad; C Bülow; G Leistner; A Terasaki; B V Issendorff; J T Lau

doi:10.1063/1.4967821

Electronic ground state of Ni₂

J Chem Phys. 2016 Nov 21;145(19):194302. doi: 10.1063/1.4967821.

Authors

V Zamudio-Bayer¹, R Lindblad¹, C Bülow¹, G Leistner¹, A Terasaki², B V Issendorff³, J T Lau¹

Affiliations

¹ Institut für Methoden und Instrumentierung der Forschung mit Synchrotronstrahlung, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Albert-Einstein-Straße 15, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
² Cluster Research Laboratory, Toyota Technological Institute, 717-86 Futamata, Ichikawa, Chiba 272-0001, Japan.
³ Physikalisches Institut, Universität Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Straße 21, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.

PMID: 27875883
DOI: 10.1063/1.4967821

Abstract

The Φ9/24 ground state of the Ni₂⁺ diatomic molecular cation is determined experimentally from temperature and magnetic-field-dependent x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy in a cryogenic ion trap, where an electronic and rotational temperature of 7.4±0.2 K was reached by buffer gas cooling of the molecular ion. The contribution of the spin dipole operator to the x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spin sum rule amounts to 7T_z=0.17±0.06μ_B per atom, approximately 11% of the spin magnetic moment. We find that, in general, homonuclear diatomic molecular cations of 3d transition metals seem to adopt maximum spin magnetic moments in their electronic ground states.