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.
Read more about this topic: Rydberg Matter
Famous quotes containing the word lifetime:
“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?”
—Allan Bloom (1930–1992)
“Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.”
—Polish Proverb. New York Times Magazine (February 20, 1994)