Identification of absolute geometries of cis and trans molecular isomers by Coulomb Explosion Imaging

Utuq Ablikim; Cédric Bomme; Hui Xiong; Evgeny Savelyev; Razib Obaid; Balram Kaderiya; Sven Augustin; Kirsten Schnorr; Ileana Dumitriu; Timur Osipov; René Bilodeau; David Kilcoyne; Vinod Kumarappan; Artem Rudenko; Nora Berrah; Daniel Rolles

doi:10.1038/srep38202

Identification of absolute geometries of cis and trans molecular isomers by Coulomb Explosion Imaging

Sci Rep. 2016 Dec 2:6:38202. doi: 10.1038/srep38202.

Authors

Utuq Ablikim¹, Cédric Bomme², Hui Xiong³, Evgeny Savelyev², Razib Obaid³, Balram Kaderiya¹, Sven Augustin^{1

4}, Kirsten Schnorr^{4

5}, Ileana Dumitriu⁶, Timur Osipov⁷, René Bilodeau^{3

8}, David Kilcoyne⁸, Vinod Kumarappan¹, Artem Rudenko¹, Nora Berrah³, Daniel Rolles^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ J. R. Macdonald Laboratory, Physics Dept., Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA.
² Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), 22607, Hamburg, Germany.
³ Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA.
⁴ Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁶ Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY 14456, USA.
⁷ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
⁸ Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

Abstract

An experimental route to identify and separate geometric isomers by means of coincident Coulomb explosion imaging is presented, allowing isomer-resolved photoionization studies on isomerically mixed samples. We demonstrate the technique on cis/trans 1,2-dibromoethene (C₂H₂Br₂). The momentum correlation between the bromine ions in a three-body fragmentation process induced by bromine 3d inner-shell photoionization is used to identify the cis and trans structures of the isomers. The experimentally determined momentum correlations and the isomer-resolved fragment-ion kinetic energies are matched closely by a classical Coulomb explosion model.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't