Coulomb explosion imaging: the CH2+, H2O+ and NH2+ ions as benchmarks

In a previous paper we calculated the average distribution of bending angle s for CH2+ ions at 300 K using ab initio surfaces for the pair of Renner in teracting ground state potentials in order to test the results of Coulomb e xplosion imaging (CEI) experiments. Here we calculate state selected bendin g angle distributions, and Boltzmann-averaged bond length distributions for CH2+ in order to inspire more CEI experiments. Using published potential e nergy curves for H2O+ and NH2+, we predict their bending angle distribution s (and that of ND2+) to provide further benchmarks to test the CEI method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.