Fragmentation Dynamics of CO2q+ (q = 2, 3) in Collisions with 1 MeV Proton

Abstract

The fragmentation dynamics of the CO2q+ (q = 2, 3) molecular ions formed under the impact of 1 MeV protons is studied using a recoil ion momentum spectrometer equipped with a multi-hit time- and position-sensitive detector. Both two-body and three-body fragmentation channels arising from the doubly and triply ionized molecular ions of CO2 are identified and analyzed. Kinetic energy release (KER) distributions have been obtained for various channels. With the help of Dalitz plots and Newton diagrams concerted and sequential processes have been assigned to observed fragmentation channels. In addition, angular correlations are used to determine the molecular geometry of the precursor molecular ion. It is found that the symmetric breakup into C+ + O+ + O+ involves asymmetric stretching of the molecular bonds in CO23+ prior to dissociation via concerted decay implying the fact that collisions with 1 MeV proton induces an asynchronous decay in CO2.