Dissociative Ionization and Coulomb Explosion of Molecular Bromocyclopropane in an Intense Femtosecond Laser Field

Abstract

The dissociative ionization and Coulomb explosion of molecular bromocyclopropane (BCP) has been experimentally investigated by time-of-flight mass spectrum and dc-slice imaging technology. The sliced 2D images, kinetic energy releases and angular distributions of the fragment ions are obtained under the intense femtosecond laser fields (8.0 × 1013–2.0 × 1014 W/cm2). The results indicated that the low kinetic energy release (KER) components come from dissociative ionization of BCP+, while the high KER components come from Coulomb explosion of BCP2+. The chemical reaction path of BCP+ has been calculated by ab initio calculation, furthermore, the C-Br bond cleavage involved Coulomb explosion channels have been revealed, and the corresponding dehydrogenation mechanism has been confirmed.