KINETIC-ENERGY RELEASE IN CO DISSOCIATION CAUSED BY FAST F4+ IMPACT

The dissociation of CO caused by 1-MeV/amu F4+ impact has been studied using the coincidence time-of-flight technique. The kinetic energy released during the dissociation of COQ+ into ion pairs C1q+ and O2q+ was determined from the measured difference in the times of flight of the two charged fragments. The kinetic-energy distributions of CO2+ dissociating into C+ and O+ as a result of different impinging projectiles have been compared. These distributions shift towards higher kinetic-energy release values with increasing strength of interaction. A single Gaussian kinetic-energy distribution is in good agreement with the highly charged CO dissociation, while for doubly and triply charged CO, additional Gaussians are needed. While the Coulomb-explosion model approximately predicts the most likely value of a measured distribution, the widths of all distributions are grossly underestimated by the model. The measured widths of the distributions can be explained only by invoking the existence of potential-energy curves of the multiply charged ions that have steeper and shallower slopes as compared to the Coulombic curve. The reflection method was used to calculate the kinetic-energy release for F4++COCO2+* transitions to all known CO2+ states. The final kinetic-energy distribution was then fitted to the data in order to evaluate the weights of the different transitions. The calculated fit is in fair agreement with the measured one, although the high-energy tail of the measured distribution could not be accounted for, indicating that contributions from highly excited dissociating states or from curve crossings need to be included. © 1995 The American Physical Society.