Field induced ionization and Coulomb explosion of carbon disulfide

Abstract

Abstract Femtosecond laser field induced ionization and Coulomb explosion of triatomic molecule carbon disulfide were investigated by using a time-of-flight mass and photoelectron spectrometer. Both linearly polarized and circularly polarized laser pulses with intensities varying from 7.2×10 13 to 2.2×10 15 W / cm 2 were used. Comparing with the linearly polarized laser, suppression of ionization occurred for the circularly polarized laser. The fact revealed that field ionization is responsible for the formation mechanism of the molecular ions. The conclusion was supported by the anisotropic angular distribution of the photoelectrons with respect to the laser polarization vector. The kinetic energies and angular distributions were also measured for the exploding fragmental ions S m + ( m =1–5) and C n + ( n =1–3), which indicated that these atomic ions were produced through the symmetric concerted explosion pathways CS 2 2 m + n →S m + +C n + +S m + . Correlating the momentum vectors for both the sulfur ions and the carbon ions, the SCS angle was determined to be 168.8±5.6° for the highly charged molecular ions prior to Coulomb explosion.