Correlated formation of the excited states of recoil and scattered ions in multiple electron capture collision of Ar8+ with CO2 and OCS

Abstract

Multiple ionization events induced by low energy collisions between Ar8+ projectiles and linear triatomic molecular targets, CO2 and OCS, were studied in order to shed light on the correlation between the electronic states of the scattered ion and the ionic fragmentation processes. Position-sensitive time-of-flight measurements of all the recoil fragments, triggered by detection of a charge-selected scattered ion, allowed us to distinguish between ionic fragmentation processes in which different numbers of Auger electrons were emitted by the projectile, just after multiple electron capture. A strong correlation is found for triple capture collisions, between fragmentation with high kinetic energy and events when only single Auger electron emission takes place.