The photodissociation of tert-butyl nitrite at 193 nm

The photodissociation of tert-butyl nitrite, (CH3)(3)CONO, at 193 nm, is ex amined by a new experimental setup for photofragment imaging. Probing nasce nt NO fragments time delayed (several mu s) and spatially displaced (relati ve to the dissociation event) by planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) y ields quantum state specific velocity distributions. In this way the intern al and the translational energy distributions are determined simultaneously , permitting a very detailed understanding of the energy partitioning of th e available energy among the product degrees of freedom and allowing one to analyze correlated product formation. The results differ very strongly fro m previous photodissociation studies of aliphatic nitrites performed at sma ller photon energies, since a different dissociation channel is taken. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(99)00110-5].