Photodissociation Dynamics Experiments with NO₂

Abstract

Stimulated by the progress in laser techniques the experimental, and by that also the theoretical investigation of photodissociation processes has gained considerable interest in recent years. For small polyatomic molecules, particularly triatomics, theory has advanced to the point where detailed dissociation cross sections on quantum state level can be treated. Using laser both for excitation of the dissociation process and for observation of products experiments of state-to-state type are now feasible in principle, though the complexity of the problem with the various dynamical parameters has confined studies to one or the other experimental aspect. Previous experiments have thus been concerned with internal product energy analyses, mostly by laser induced fluorescence, or with kinetic energy and angular distribution measurement by time-of-flight techniques. Also, experiments have been conducted so far almost exclusively at fixed dissociation energies, leaving the fundamentally important question of the spectral dependence very much open.