VECTOR PROPERTIES IN PHOTODISSOCIATION - QUANTUM TREATMENT OF THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE SPATIAL ANISOTROPY AND THE ANGULAR-MOMENTUM POLARIZATION OF THE FRAGMENTS

The dependence of the angular momentum polarization (orientation and a lignment) of the fragments on the direction of ejection k, is studied quantum mechanically for molecular photodissociation into two fragment s of which one carries an angular momentum j. Explicit expressions in terms of the transition matrix elements for electronic excitation into the final dissociative states are given in the axial-recoil limit and for different photon polarizations. The importance of interference ef fects due to coherent excitation of dissociative states with different helicity quantum numbers (the projection Omega of j on the recoil dir ection k) is stressed. It is shown that not only absolute magnitudes b ut also relative phases of individual transition matrix elements can b e determined separately if the spatial anisotropy of the angular momen tum polarization is measured.