Selective Bond Breaking in CO$_2^{2+}$ Induced by Photoelectron Recoil
Atomic Physics
2025-09-12 v1
Abstract
After core-ionization of CO, typically an Auger-Meitner decay takes place, leading to the formation of a dicationic molecule that may dissociate into CO and O. We demonstrate experimentally that the recoil momentum of the photoelectron steers, which of the two equivalent bonds breaks during the dissociation. At 20 keV photon energy, we observe an asymmetry of up to 25% for bond cleavage that depends on the emission direction of the photoelectron. Furthermore, we show that this effect leads to a significant nondipole effect in molecular dissociation in the laboratory frame: O fragments are more likely to be emitted in the direction opposite to the light propagation than along it.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.15177,
title = {Selective Bond Breaking in CO$_2^{2+}$ Induced by Photoelectron Recoil},
author = {J. Weiherer and N. Melzer and M. Kircher and A. Pier and L. Kaiser and J. Kruse and N. Anders and J. Stindl and L. Sommerlad and O. D. McGinnis and M. Schmidt and J. Drnec and F. Trinter and M. S. Schöffler and L. Ph. H. Schmidt and N. Sisourat and S. Eckart and T. Jahnke and R. Dörner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.15177},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures