Dissociation dynamics of highly-charged molecules in intense laser fields

Abstract

Covariance mapping is used to study the dissociation dynamics of highly-charged triatomic molecules possessing linear (CS2) and bent (NO2) equilibrium geometries, and linear carbon clusters. An intense picosecond laser is utilized to produce these highly-charged species. The measured values of kinetic energy release when such ions dissociate are very much less than those measured in single-photon and electron-impact experiments. This reduction is likely to be a manifestation of the extent to which molecular potential energy surfaces are "flattened" by the action of the intense, linearly polarized laser radiation, akin to the bond-softening process that has been observed in the case of diatomic molecules. Our observations indicate that distortion of molecular potential energy surfaces may be the dominating feature in interactions between intense fields and linear molecules; the dynamics in the case of molecules possessing nonlinear geometries is much more complex and vector correlations appear to also play an important role.