Charge-transfer-induced evaporation in collisions of Li₃₁²⁺ clusters with Cs atoms

We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of dissociative charge transfer in collisions of slow Li₃₁²⁺ clusters with Cs atoms. We provide a direct quantitative comparison between theory and experiment and show that good agreement is only found when the experimental time-of-flight and initial cluster temperature are taken into account in the theoretical modeling. This model explains evaporation as resulting from a collisional energy deposit due to cluster electronic excitation during charge transfer. We discuss in detail the basic mechanisms that are responsible for the charge-transfer reaction and different approximations to evaluate the energy deposit.