The kinetic energy of PAH dication and trication dissociation determined by recoil-frame covariance map imaging

Jason W L Lee; Denis S Tikhonov; Felix Allum; Rebecca Boll; Pragya Chopra; Benjamin Erk; Sebastian Gruet; Lanhai He; David Heathcote; Mehdi M Kazemi; Jan Lahl; Alexander K Lemmens; Donatella Loru; Sylvain Maclot; Robert Mason; Erland Müller; Terry Mullins; Christopher Passow; Jasper Peschel; Daniel Ramm; Amanda L Steber; Sadia Bari; Mark Brouard; Michael Burt; Jochen Küpper; Per Eng-Johnsson; Anouk M Rijs; Daniel Rolles; Claire Vallance; Bastian Manschwetus; Melanie Schnell

doi:10.1039/d2cp02252d

The kinetic energy of PAH dication and trication dissociation determined by recoil-frame covariance map imaging

Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2022 Oct 5;24(38):23096-23105. doi: 10.1039/d2cp02252d.

Authors

Jason W L Lee^{1

2}, Denis S Tikhonov^{1

3}, Felix Allum², Rebecca Boll⁴, Pragya Chopra^{1

3}, Benjamin Erk¹, Sebastian Gruet¹, Lanhai He⁵, David Heathcote², Mehdi M Kazemi¹, Jan Lahl⁶, Alexander K Lemmens^{7

8}, Donatella Loru¹, Sylvain Maclot^{9

10}, Robert Mason², Erland Müller¹, Terry Mullins¹¹, Christopher Passow¹, Jasper Peschel⁶, Daniel Ramm¹, Amanda L Steber^{1

3

11}, Sadia Bari¹, Mark Brouard², Michael Burt², Jochen Küpper^{5

11

12}, Per Eng-Johnsson⁶, Anouk M Rijs⁷, Daniel Rolles¹³, Claire Vallance², Bastian Manschwetus¹, Melanie Schnell¹

Affiliations

¹ Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Germany. melanie.schnell@desy.de.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, UK. jason.lee@chem.ox.ac.uk.
³ Institute of Physical Chemistry, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany.
⁴ European XFEL, Germany.
⁵ Center for Free-Electron Laser Science CFEL, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Germany.
⁶ Department of Physics, Lund University, Sweden.
⁷ Radboud University, FELIX Laboratory, The Netherlands.
⁸ Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
⁹ KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
¹⁰ Physics Department, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
¹¹ Center for Ultrafast Imaging, Universität Hamburg, Germany.
¹² Department of Physics, Universität Hamburg, Germany.
¹³ J.R. Macdonald Laboratory, Department of Physics, Kansas State University, KS, USA.

Abstract

We investigated the dissociation of dications and trications of three polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), fluorene, phenanthrene, and pyrene. PAHs are a family of molecules ubiquitous in space and involved in much of the chemistry of the interstellar medium. In our experiments, ions are formed by interaction with 30.3 nm extreme ultraviolet (XUV) photons, and their velocity map images are recorded using a PImMS2 multi-mass imaging sensor. Application of recoil-frame covariance analysis allows the total kinetic energy release (TKER) associated with multiple fragmentation channels to be determined to high precision, ranging 1.94-2.60 eV and 2.95-5.29 eV for the dications and trications, respectively. Experimental measurements are supported by Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) simulations.