Complete Coulomb fragmentation of CO₂in collisions with 5.9 MeV u¹Xe¹⁸and Xe⁴³

Abstract

We studied the ionization and fragmentation of CO2 in collisions with 5.9 MeV u−1 Xe18+ and Xe43+ ions utilizing a position-and time-sensitive multi-particle detector. By coincident measurement of the momenta of correlated fragment ions the applied method yields a kinematically complete description of the fragmentation process. Of special interest are the 'Coulomb explosion' (CE) processes CO2 − → Cp+ + Oq+ + Or+ for which the released kinetic energy as well as angular correlations are determined. The measured angular spectra are—provided that the molecular vibrations of CO2 are taken into account—in reasonable agreement with a simple CE model. This model is, however, insufficient to explain the observed energy distributions. Apparently the detailed electronic structure of the intermediate highly charged CO2 ion plays an important role.