A Direct Measure of the Partitioning of Electronic, Vibrational, Rotational, and Translational Energies in Unimolecular Processes

Abstract

Although a considerable body of information has been published [1] characterizing various features of collisionless multiple-photon dissociation (cmpd) in the presence of an intense in electromagnetic field, it has been only recently that the dynamics of the dissociation process have begun to be investigated using molecular beam techniques [2]. Recent experiments in our laboratory [3] have demonstrated that the technique of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) provides a very sensitive method of monitoring timevarying concentrations of ground or low-lying excited state fragments produced by cmpd of a variety of polyatomic molecules. Our goal in these experiments is not only to identify the various dissociation fragments, but also to measure how the available energy is partitioned between electronic, vibrational, rotational, and translational energies of the fragments. In this paper we report measurements of the energy distributed in C₂ molecules formed from cmpd of a number of polyatomic molecules (C₂H₅CN, C₂H₅OH, C₂H₃CN,...).