Ion imaging the recoil energy distribution following vibrational predissociation of triplet state pyrazine-Ar van der Waals clusters

The ion imaging technique has been used to determine the recoil energy dist ribution of triplet pyrazine fragments following vibrational predissociatio n of pyrazine-AT van der Waals clusters containing similar to 4000 cm(-1) o f vibrational energy. The 2-dimensional image of the isotropic recoil distr ibution was converted to a radial velocity distribution using an analytical inverse Abel transform. The recoil probability distribution is found to be a monotonically decreasing function of energy, with an average recoil of s imilar to 95 cm(-1). Information theory is used to interpret the experiment al results. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.