Fragment correlation in the three-body breakup of triatomic hydrogen

We investigate the fragmentation of the triatomic hydrogen molecule H-3 in a triple-coincidence experiment. A single rovibronic state of H-3 is laser prepared and its breakup into three hydrogen atoms H(1s) is monitored by ti me- and position-sensitive multihit detectors. For each triple hit, the mom entum vectors of the three H(1s) fragments are determined. The sixfold diff erential cross section of the fragment momentum components in the center-of -mass frame is found to be highly structured and to depend sensitively on t he H-3 initial electronic state.