Direct Observation of High-Spin States in Manganese Dimer and Trimer Cations by X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy in an Ion Trap

Abstract

The electronic structure and magnetic moments of free Mn${}_2^{+}$ and Mn${}_3^{+}$ are characterized by $2p$ x-ray absorption and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy in a cryogenic ion trap that is coupled to a synchrotron radiation beamline. Our results show directly that localized magnetic moments of 5 ${\mu }_B$ are created by $3d^5{(}^6\mathrm{S})$ states at each ionic core, which are coupled in parallel to form molecular high-spin states via indirect exchange that is mediated in both cases by a delocalized valence electron in a singly-occupied $4s$ derived orbital with an unpaired spin. This leads to total magnetic moments of 11 ${\mu }_B$ for Mn${}_2^{+}$ and 16 ${\mu }_B$ for Mn${}_3^{+}$, with no contribution of orbital angular momentum.

References in corpus (2)

• Structure, electronic properties and magnetic transition in manganese clusters
• Internal state thermometry of cold trapped molecular anions