1+1CDAD: A New Technique for Studying Photofragment Alignment

摘要

In recent years, the alignment of photofragments created by photodissociation of polyatomic molecules has been under intense investigation. Alignment information provides insight into the dynamics of the photodissociation process. Until now, fluorescence techniques (most often laser-induced fluorescence or LIF) have been used almost exclusively to determine the photofragment alignment. In this Comment we report a new method for probing photofragment alignment, namely, circular dichroism in the photoelectron angular distributions (CDAD). Most importantly, we demonstrate here that the photofragment alignment can be extracted from the CDAD spectra in a straightforward manner, independent of the photoionization dynamics. We believe this characteristic should enhance the practicality of this technique. CDAD has recently been observed experimentally. Here, we only give the highlights of this new method: the details will be given in a later publication. Keywords: Reprints. (JHD)