PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

We studied the ionization and fragmentation of CO2 in collisions with 5.9 MeV u(-1) Xe18+ and Xe43+ ions utilizing a position- and time-sensitive multiparticle detector. By coincident measurement of the momenta of correlated fragment ions the applied method yields a kinematically complete description of the fragmentation process. Of special interest are the 'Coulomb explosion' (CE) processes CO2 --> Cp+ + Oq+ + Or+ for which the released kinetic energy as well as angular correlations are determined. The measured angular spectra are-provided that the molecular vibrations Of CO2 are taken into account-in reasonable agreement with a simple CE model. This model is, however, insufficient to explain the observed energy distributions. Apparently the detailed electronic structure of them intermediate highly charged CO2 ion plays an important role.