Photofragmentation study of Cl-2 using ion imaging

The Cl(P-2(3/2)) and Cl(P-2(1/2)) photofragments produced by the photolysis of Cl-2 at similar to 3.5 eV, are detected using (3+1) and (2+1) resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization and their velocity distributions are measured using ion imaging. The measured photofragment translational energy distributions yield a bond dissociation energy of D-0 = 2.474 +/- 0.020 eV for ground electronic state Cl-2(X-1 Sigma(g)). The angular distributions yield anisotropy parameters of beta(P-2(3/2)) = -0.87 +/- 0.05 and beta(P-2(1/2)) = 1.78 +/- 0.05 irrespective of the detection process. The branching ratio [Cl(P-2(1/2))]/[Cl(P-2(3/2))] is estimated at 8 +/- 1%. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.