EXTRACTION OF THE TRANSITION DIPOLE MATRIX FROM THE PHOTODISSOCIATIONOF ORIENTED ALIGNED PARENT MOLECULES/

A formalism for the analysis of detailed photofragmentation experiment s involving oriented/aligned parent molecules is presented. It is demo nstrated for the photofragmentation of an oriented/aligned parent mole cule that both the magnitudes and the relative-phases of the transitio n dipole matrix elements can be determined from angle integrated cross sections or the product orientation/alignment moments derived from th em. Formulas are presented for extracting transition dipole matrix ele ments from the photodissociation of an aligned diatomic molecule to fo rm aligned and/or oriented atomic products using linearly or circularl y polarized photolysis lasers. While these detailed measurements are i deally performed using inhomogeneous field state-selected parent molec ules, they can be also readily carried out by doing double-resonance p hotodissociation experiments with polarized lasers. The analysis prese nted here can, therefore, be used to extract the transition dipole mat rix elements from these double-resonance photofragmentation experiment s as well. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.