Muonium diffusion dynamics in mercury oxide

Abstract

The diffusion dynamics of the neutral muonium state found in HgO is addressed in this work. We propose a hopping model for the diffusion, and use it to analyse time-domain [mu]SR data. It is found that the diffusion is an incoherent quantum process, with an activation energy of 5.2(2) meV. The analysis also points to the anti-bonding site as the best-suited candidate for the muon's localisation.