DISSOCIATION OF HIGHLY CHARGED CO(Q+) (Q-GREATER-THAN-OR-EQUAL-TO-2) IONS VIA NON-COULOMBIC POTENTIAL-ENERGY CURVES

Formation and subsequent decay of very highly charged states of CO molecular ions has been studied in 97 MeV collisions between F8+ and CO using a crossed beams apparatus by measuring the energy distributions of carbon and oxygen ions. The kinetic energies released (KER) upon dissociation of CO(q+) (q = 2-10) ions have been investigated by means of large scale, ab initio, configuration interaction molecular orbital calculations. Results indicate that dissociation via non-Coulombic potential energy curves of CO(q+) ions yields lower values of KER than would be expected from purely Coulombic considerations due to the significance of electronic charge density distributions in the internuclear region.