Dissociative frustrated multiple ionization of hydrogen chloride in intense femtosecond laser fields

Abstract

The dissociative frustrated multiple ionization of hydrogen chloride (HCl) molecules in intense femtosecond laser fields is investigated by employing the coincidence measurement technique in cold target recoil ion momentum spectroscopy. Various dissociative frustrated multiple ionization channels caused by populating one or two electrons to highly excited Rydberg states can be clearly distinguished for HCl in linearly polarized intense laser fields. The excited charged fragmentations, depending on their occupied principle quantum numbers, can be either directly identified forming a ``knee'' structure in the kinetic energy release spectrum, or singly ionized by the weak electric field in the spectrometer, or by blackbody radiation after the conclusion of the laser pulse. The inherent feature of the potential energy curves of HCl plays an important role in the strong-field dissociative frustrated multiple ionization process.