PHOTODISSOCIATION DYNAMICS OF AR3+

The nonadiabatic trajectory calculations were performed for the photodissociation process 0 Ar3+ Two methods-hemiquantal dynamics and Tully's surface-hopping method-were applied and the results were compared. The calculated velocities of the photofragments had slow and fast bimodal distributions, as were experimentally observed. The ratio of the slow Ar+ fragment to the fast one decreased with the excitation wavelength, also in good agreement with the experimental results. It was shown that the slow component of Ar+ was produced only through the nonadiabatic transition during the photoissociation process, and that the nonadiabatic transition was dependent on the excitation energy. In addition, the vibrational motion, especially the bending motion, was shown to play an important role in the nonadiabatic process.