English

Observation of Above-Threshold Dissociation of Na$_2^+$ in Intense Laser Fields

Chemical Physics 2008-08-24 v5 Atomic and Molecular Clusters

Abstract

We report the observation of above-threshold dissociation of a multielectron molecular system, Na2+_2^+. The process is due to continuum-continuum transitions in a field-dressed molecular continuum. Three well resolved fragmentation channels with different kinetic energy release patterns have been detected, of which, two are associated with ordinary photodissociation via light-induced potentials into Na(3s) + Na+^+ and Na(3p) + Na+^+, and one with continuum-continuum transitions and above-threshold dissociation into Na(3p) + Na+^+. We show that when we dress this molecule with a field whose intensity is ~3 x 1012^{12} W/cm2^2, above-threshold dissociation prevails over other processes, such as field-ionization followed by Coulomb explosion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.2762,
  title  = {Observation of Above-Threshold Dissociation of Na$_2^+$ in Intense Laser Fields},
  author = {Qun Zhang and John W. Hepburn and Moshe Shapiro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.2762},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

15 pages, 3 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev. A (Rapid Communications)