CAN MOLECULAR ZEKE STATES BE GENERATED BY RYDBERG ELECTRON PICKUP

We report experiments displaying simultaneous measurement of mass-selected delayed pulsed field ionization spectra of two isotopically different species in a common laser focus. The experiments show that charge transfer from a ZEKE excited species into high Rydberg states of surrounding ions although definitely observable is only a minor contribution to typical ZEKE spectra at normal low laser intensities and is below the noise level if ZEKE fragment spectra from up-pumped Rydbergs are recorded.