Laser Coulomb-explosion imaging of small molecules

F. Légaré, Kevin F. Lee, I. V. Litvinyuk, P. W. Dooley, S. S. Wesolowski, P. R. Bunker, P. Dombi, F. Krausz, A. D. Bandrauk, D. M. Villeneuve, and P. B. Corkum
Phys. Rev. A 71, 013415 – Published 19 January 2005

Abstract

We use intense few-cycle laser pulses to ionize molecules to the point of Coulomb explosion. We use Coulomb’s law or ab initio potentials to reconstruct the molecular structure of D2O and SO2 from the correlated momenta of exploded fragments. For D2O, a light and fast system, we observed about 0.3Å and 15° deviation from the known bond length and bond angle. By simulating the Coulomb explosion for equilibrium geometry, we showed that this deviation is mainly caused by ion motion during ionization. Measuring three-dimensional structure with half bond length resolution is sufficient to observe large-scale rearrangements of small molecules such as isomerization processes.

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  • Received 11 August 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.71.013415

©2005 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

F. Légaré1,2, Kevin F. Lee1,3, I. V. Litvinyuk4, P. W. Dooley1,3, S. S. Wesolowski1, P. R. Bunker1, P. Dombi5, F. Krausz5, A. D. Bandrauk2, D. M. Villeneuve1, and P. B. Corkum1

  • 1National Research Council of Canada, 100 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0R6
  • 2Département de Chimie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada J1K 2R1
  • 3Department of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M1
  • 4Department of Physics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506, USA
  • 5Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria

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Vol. 71, Iss. 1 — January 2005

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