Abstract
We demonstrate that the structure of the outermost orbitals of oxygen and nitrogen can be observed in the angular distribution of coincident ion pairs generated by the double ionization of these molecules by 8 fs laser pulses. We do this by establishing that these ions emerge from well defined excited electronic states of and respectively and that they are produced dominantly through a process which involves electron rescattering. The angular distributions of the ions from the two targets are very different, reflecting the different structures of the outermost orbitals of the two molecules.
- Received 19 May 2004
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.113003
©2004 American Physical Society