Observation of circular dichroism in photoelectron angular distributions

Abstract

The first observations of dichroic effects in photoelectron angular distributions are reported for photoionization of aligned molecular excited states with circularly polarized light. Photoelectron angular distributions resulting from the two-color, (2+1) REMPI of NO via the A 2∑+, v=0, J=3/2,5/2 excited states exhibit significant left–right asymmetry. The experimental CD angular distributions are found to be well described by the general theoretical framework recently developed by Dubs, Dixit, and McKoy and are in good qualitative agreement with their calculated REMPI–CD distributions.