KINETIC-ENERGY RELEASE IN THE DISSOCIATIVE CAPTURE-IONIZATION OF CO MOLECULES BY 97-MEV AR14+ IONS

The dissociation of COQ+ molecular ion (Q = 4 to 9) produced in multip ly ionizing collisions accompanied by the transfer of an electron to t he projectile has been studied using time-of-flight techniques. Analys is of the coincident-ion-pair flight-time-difference distributions yie lded average values of the kinetic-energy releases for the various dis sociation reactions. These values were found to be as much as a factor of 2 greater than the kinetic-energy releases expected for dissociati on along Coulombic potential curves. The average kinetic-energy releas e observed for a given ion pair with charges q(1) and q(2) are nearly equal to the point-charge Coulomb potential energies for an ion pair w ith charges q(1)+1 and q(2)+1, suggesting that the parent molecular io n is formed with two electrons, on average, in highly excited states t hat do not contribute to the screening of the nuclei.