Contribution of different electron-capture mechanisms in the fragmentation of CO23+ upon slow ion-molecule collision

Abstract

Abstract We present recoil ion - projectile ion coincidence study on the three body fragmentation of CO23+ ion into C+ + O+ + O+ fragments upon impact with
Ar3+, Ar6+ and Ar8+ projectile ions having the same velocity of vp = 0.49 a.u. (atomic units) using recoil ion momentum imaging technique. The kinetic energy
release (KER) distributions are presented and effect of different electron-capture associated processes such as pure capture, electron capture followed by target ionization or projectile auto-ionization is discussed based on the analysis of KER corresponding to different final projectile charge state post collision. As the capture stabilization increased the relative yields in the KER distribution are found to decrease in the high KER side for low charged Ar3+ impact, while an increase is observed for Ar6+ and Ar8+ impacts. We discussed the interplay between electron-capture, projectile auto-ionization and target ionization for the dominance of particular process. We also observed a low-KER feature around 15 eV which was observed for electron
and proton impacts, which was not yet observed for highly charged ion impacts