Stability of the Ground State Vinylidene AnionH2CC

Abstract
A technique to measure very low collisionless decay rates of ionic species has been applied at a new electrostatic storage ring to obtain the rate for spontaneous rearrangement of the vinylidene anion to neutral acetylene. The measurement yields a rate of k0=(0.009±0.006)s1, corresponding to a natural lifetime of the vinylidene anion of τ0110s.