VISIBLE LUMINESCENCE FROM PARTICLES ON SURFACES - EVIDENCE OF DEEXCITATION OF RYDBERG MATTER

Experiments are described that provide evidence for the formation of an excited condensed state of matter in the form of mu-m to mm size particles. The particles are formed at a high temperature diffusion source, which has been shown to give field ionizable clusters of cesium in previous experiments (Aman et al., 1990). The excited matter formed by cesium, hydrogen, or ethylene in the source is in the present experiments collected on a surface, which is cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature. Subsequently, the excited particles emit their excitation energy in the form of visible "microflashes", either spontaneously or triggered by impact of low energy ions. An estimate of the visible energy in the microflashes agrees well with the energy contained in an excited state of matter that was predicted by Manykin et al. (1981, 1982). We conclude that our results agree with their predictions.