DISSOCIATION DYNAMICS OF N2O IN SUPEREXCITED STATES AS PROBED BY 2-DIMENSIONAL FLUORESCENCE SPECTROSCOPY

The dispersed fluorescence yields of excited photodissociation fragmen ts of N2O are obtained by means of the two-dimensional fluorescence sp ectroscopy as a function of both the excitation energy (E(ex)) in the range 14.28-36.35 eV and the fluorescence wavelength (lambda(fl)) in t he range 80-200 nm. Final dissociation products, dissociation limits, and correlation among different neutral dissociation channels are iden tified. In most cases of the neutral dissociation of superexcited stat es below 20 eV, neutral dissociation is shown to proceed via multichan nel predissociation. The nd pi Rydberg states converging to N2O+(C-2 S igma(+)) are shown to have the neutral dissociation channel with speci fic branching ratios for their decay. The neutral dissociation into N- 2(a(1) Pi(g)) + O is shown to diminish at the threshold energy for the three-body neutral dissociation, Broad features of enhanced fluoresce nce above 20 eV are identified as multiply excited neutral states.