THE VIBRATIONAL PREDISSOCIATION OF AR-CO2 AT THE STATE-TO-STATE LEVEL .2. ROTATIONAL PROPENSITY RULES AND VECTOR CORRELATIONS

The vibrational predissociation of Ar-CO2 has been studied at the state-to-state level with the emphasis of the present work being on the determination of the rotational propensity rules governing this process and their dependence on the initial state of the parent complex. We find that for the low J, K= 1 initial states associated with the (101)/(02(0)1) Fermi diad of the parent complex, there is a strong propensity for the production of the CO2 fragments in odd j states. This propensity rule breaks down as J' of the complex increases and preliminary results show that the final state distributions are also strongly dependent on K. The dependence of the photofragment angular distributions on the laser polarization direction is also reported, which provides additional dynamical information (vector correlations) on the nature of the photodissociation process.