Fragmentation of Multiply Charged C10H8 Isomers Produced in keV Range Proton Collision

The dissociation of multiply charged C10H8 isomers produced in fast proton collisions (velocities between 1.41 and 2.4 a.u.) is discussed in terms of their fundamental molecular dynamics, in particular the processes that produce different carbon clusters in such a collision. This aspect is assessed with the help of a multi-hit analysis of daughter ions detected in coincidence with the elimination of H+ and CHn+ (n = 0 to 3). The elimination of H+/C+ is found to be significantly different from CH3+ loss. The loss of CH3+ proceeds through a cascade of momentum-correlated dissociations with the formation of heavy ions such as C9H5+, C9H52+ and C7H3+. The structure of such large fragment ions is predicted with the help of their calculated ground state electronic energies and the multi-hit time-of-flight (ToF) correlation between the second and third hit fragments if detected. Furthermore, we report experimentally the super-dehydrogenation of naphthalene and azulene targets, with evidence of complete dehydrogenation in a single collision.