RADIATIVE COOLING OF FULLERENES

We have measured the metastable fragmentation of fullerene ions in mol ecular beams. The rates are significantly smaller than the evaporative ensemble prediction, consistent with an alternative cooling mechanism through emission of electromagnetic radiation. Modeling the competiti on between radiative and evaporative cooling yields information about the evaporative activation energy and emissivity of the carbon cluster s. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.