Zero photoemission from icosahedral superatoms
Abstract
Photoemission is expected to occur when the photon energy exceeds the binding energy of an electron, with the photoemission yield generally remaining non-zero above this threshold. Yet, it can be suppressed at specific photon energies, a phenomenon known as the Cooper minimum. Although complete suppression represents an extreme limit of this phenomenon, such zero photoemission has previously been reported only for atoms with an outermost s-type orbital and has never been observed in non-atomic systems. Here, we demonstrate the deliberate realization of zero photoemission from Ag12W-, an artificial icosahedral superatom, by observing a vanishing photoemission cross section 0.85 eV above the detachment threshold and reproducing this behavior in theoretical simulations. These simulations predict that zero photoemission can be common in nearly spherical nanoclusters, a prediction we experimentally confirm using Ag12Mo-, an isoelectronic counterpart of Ag12W-. Because superatoms offer systematic control over both size and elemental composition using the periodic table, our findings establish a route toward active control of photoemission in finite-size quantum systems and stimulate further investigations of underexplored physical phenomena such as nondipole effects.
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BibTeX
@misc{suzuki2026zero,
title = {{Zero photoemission from icosahedral superatoms}},
author = {Yuta Suzuki and Mamoru Tanaka and Yoshi-ichi Suzuki and Akira Terasaki and Takuya Horio},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.32031},
eprint = {2610.32031},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32031},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Zero photoemission from icosahedral superatoms
AU - Yuta Suzuki
AU - Mamoru Tanaka
AU - Yoshi-ichi Suzuki
AU - Akira Terasaki
AU - Takuya Horio
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.32031
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32031
AB - Photoemission is expected to occur when the photon energy exceeds the binding energy of an electron, with the photoemission yield generally remaining non-zero above this threshold. Yet, it can be suppressed at specific photon energies, a phenomenon known as the Cooper minimum. Although complete suppression represents an extreme limit of this phenomenon, such zero photoemission has previously been reported only for atoms with an outermost s-type orbital and has never been observed in non-atomic systems. Here, we demonstrate the deliberate realization of zero photoemission from Ag12W-, an artificial icosahedral superatom, by observing a vanishing photoemission cross section 0.85 eV above the detachment threshold and reproducing this behavior in theoretical simulations. These simulations predict that zero photoemission can be common in nearly spherical nanoclusters, a prediction we experimentally confirm using Ag12Mo-, an isoelectronic counterpart of Ag12W-. Because superatoms offer systematic control over both size and elemental composition using the periodic table, our findings establish a route toward active control of photoemission in finite-size quantum systems and stimulate further investigations of underexplored physical phenomena such as nondipole effects.
ER -