Fragmentation Studies with Stored Beams of Small Polyatomic Ions
The structure of small molecules, as well as their reactions, is closely related to the fundamental mechanisms governing all chemical reactions. Experimental investigations of molecular fragmentation processes thus yield important data contributing to the detailed understanding of these basic mechanisms. As an advantageous environment for such studies on molecular ions nowadays heavy ion storage rings are available, where so far mainly diatomic molecules were studied under well defined conditions and with efficient detection of the fragments produced. For a detailed investigation of polyatomic systems, the standard techniques established for previous fragmentation studies on diatomic ions have to be extended in several aspects, mainly connected to the identification of the emerging fragments and to the analysis of the occurring multi-dimensional breakup geometries. In this work, the extension of experimental methods on triatomic molecules is studied for two cases: The dissociative recombination of the H3+ cation and its isotopomers with slow electrons, focusing on fragmentation geometries and isotope effects, and the fragmentation of the LiH2- anion following electron detachment, here focusing on the chemical composition of the products.
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