Rydberg Matter - Lifetime

Lifetime

Due to reasons still debated by the physics community because of the lack of methods to observe clusters, Rydberg matter is highly stable against disintegration by emission of radiation; the characteristic lifetime of a cluster at n = 12 is 25 seconds. Reasons given include the lack of overlap between excited and ground states, the forbidding of transitions between them and exchange-correlation effects hindering emission through necessitating tunnelling that causes a long delay in excitation decay. Excitation plays a role in determining lifetimes, with a higher excitation giving a longer lifetime; n = 80 gives a lifetime comparable to the age of the Universe.

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Famous quotes containing the word lifetime:

    The greatest part of each day, each year, each lifetime is made up of small, seemingly insignificant moments. Those moments may be cooking dinner...relaxing on the porch with your own thoughts after the kids are in bed, playing catch with a child before dinner, speaking out against a distasteful joke, driving to the recycling center with a week’s newspapers. But they are not insignificant, especially when these moments are models for kids.
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    Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?
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