On systems with and without excess energy in environment: ICD and other interatomic mechanisms

How does a microscopic system like an atom or a small molecule get rid of the excess
electronic energy it has acquired, for instance, by absorbing a photon? If this microscopic system is
isolated, the issue has been much investigated and the answer to this question is more or less well
known. But what happens if our system has neighbors as is usually the case in nature or in the
laboratory? In a human society, if our stress is large, we would like to pass it over to our neighbors.
Indeed, this is in brief what happens also to the sufficiently excited microscopic system. A new
mechanism of energy transfer has been theoretically predicted and verified in several exciting
experiments. This mechanism seems to prevail “everywhere” from the extreme quantum system of
the He dimer to water and even to quantum dots. The transfer is ultrafast and typically dominates
other relaxation pathways.
Can there be interatomic/intermolecular processes in environment when the system itself
(again, an atom or small molecule) does not possess excess energy? The answer to this intriguing
question is yes. The possible processes are introduced and discussed. Examples and arguments are
presented which make clear that the processes in question play a substantial role in nature and
laboratory.
Work on the interatomic processes discussed can be found in the Bibliography:
http://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/tc/usr/icd/ICD.refbase.html