VELOCITY-ALIGNED PHOTOFRAGMENT DYNAMICS - STEREODYNAMICS IN THE REACTION O(1D) + N2O -] NO + NO

The secondary reaction of velocity aligned, superthermal atoms generated via molecular photodissociation can lead to aligned secondary reaction products. Their vector properties and their quantum state distributions can be measured by using Doppler resolved, polarized laser probe techniques. A simple LAB --> CM transformation can thus be used to determine the vector correlations among k (the bimolecular collision velocity vectors), k' (the reaction products' velocity vectors), and j' (the reaction products' angular momenta). These are analogous to the (mu, v, j) correlations in the primary photodissociation. The strategy is demonstrated in a study of the dynamical stereochemistry of the reaction O(1D) + N2O --> NO + NO.