Single-Photon Double Ionization of Ozone
Abstract
Ozone (O3) is a triatomic molecule of central importance in the chemistry and physics of the Earth's and other planetary atmospheres. Beyond its environmental significance, a detailed understanding of the electronic structure and ionization dynamics of ozone is essential for modeling atmospheric, ionospheric, and astrochemical processes. In the present work, we substantially extend the experimental and theoretical characterization of ozone into the regime of valence double photoionization. Using HeII-alpha, HeII-beta, and higher-energy vacuum ultraviolet radiation in combination with a versatile multiple charged-particle correlation detection technique, we report the first single-photon valence double ionization electron spectrum of O3. To interpret the experimental observations, we mapped the lowest potential energy surfaces of dicationic ozone employing post-Hartree-Fock multi-configurational-interaction methods, and computed with high accuracy the energetics of the relevant dissociation channels. Our results demonstrate that dissociative double ionization of ozone produces electronically excited cationic atomic oxygen fragments in addition to the ground-state dissociation pathway, revealing a richer fragmentation dynamics than hitherto recognized.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.10918,
title = {Single-Photon Double Ionization of Ozone},
author = {Veronica Daver Ideböhn and Antoine Gloriod and Richard J. Squibb and Andreas Hult Roos and Nihar Ranjan Behera and Ishita Kanungo and Elias Gustafsson and Simon Gällblad and Saga Berglund and Emelie Olsson and Gunnar Öhrwall and Gunnar Nyman and John M. Dyke and John H. D. Eland and Majdi Hochlaf and Raimund Feifel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.10918},
year = {2026}
}