Reactive Bimolecular Collisions Studied With Combined Pulsed Lasers and Pulsed, Crossed, Supersonic Molecular Beams

Abstract

Pulsed, supersonic molecular beams and pulsed lasers are particularly well matched tools when combined in molecular reaction dynamics studies. Salient features of an experiment using two pulsed molecular beam sources, a pulsed ultra-violet laser for creating reactive atoms by laser ablation and a pulsed dye laser for performing laser-induced fluorescence detection of the products are described. Differences with steady-state molecular beam experiments are outlined with respect to the following points: facility of inverting the data, possibility of obtaining high signal-to-background ratios and wide ranges of collision energy. These points are illustrated with some results concerning the reactions:C(n3P)J + NO(Xπr2)→ CN(X2Σ2) + O(n3PJ),C(n3PJ) + N2O(X1Σ+) →CN(X2Σ+) + NO(Xπr2)and Mg(n1S0) + N2O(X1Σ+) →MgO(X1Σ+) + N2(X1Σg+)