Nonradiative Electronic Deexcitation Time Scales in Metal Clusters
  The life-times due to Auger-electron emission for a hole on a deep electronic shell of neutral and charged sodium clusters are studied for different sizes. We consider spherical clusters and calculate the Auger-transition probabilities using the energy levels and wave functions calculated in the Local-Density-Approximation (LDA).   We obtain that Auger emission processes are energetically not allowed for neutral and positively charged sodium clusters. In general, the Auger probabilities in small Na$_N^-$ clusters are remarkably different from the atomic ones and exhibit a rich size dependence.   The Auger decay times of most of the cluster sizes studied are orders of magnitude larger than in atoms and might be comparable with typical fragmentation times. 
M. E. Garcia, Ll. Serra, F. Garcias and K. H. Bennemann