We present experimental results for dissociative electron attachment to acetylene near the 3 eV $^2Pi_g$ resonance. In particular, we use an ion-momentum imaging technique to investigate the dissociation channel leading to C$_2$H$^-$ fragments. From our measured ion-momentum results we extract fragment kinetic energy and angular distributions. We directly observe a significant dissociation bending dynamic associated with the formation of the transitory negative ion. In modeling this bending dynamic with emph{ab initio} electronic structure and fixed-nuclei scattering calculations we obtain good agreement with the experiment.
We report the results of a first-principles study of dissociative electron attachment to H2O. The cross sections are obtained from nuclear dynamics calculations carried out in full dimensionality within the local complex potential model by using the multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method. The calculations employ our previously obtained global, complex-valued, potential-energy surfaces for the three (doublet B1, doublet A1, and doublet B2) electronic Feshbach resonances involved in this process. These three metastable states of H2O- undergo several degeneracies, and we incorporate both the Renner-Teller coupling between the B1 and A1 states as well as the conical intersection between the A1 and B2 states into our treatment. The nuclear dynamics are inherently multidimensional and involve branching between different final product arrangements as well as extensive excitation of the diatomic fragment. Our results successfully mirror the qualitative features of the major fragment channels observed, but are less successful in reproducing the available results for some of the minor channels. We comment on the applicability of the local complex potential model to such a complicated resonant system.
We present predictions for the exclusive and dissociative production of vector mesons off protons in an electron-ion collider. The computation is based on the energy-dependent hot spot model that has successfully described the available photoproduction data. We find that the model also describes correctly all available electroproduction data. In addition, we find that the cross section for dissociative production as a function of the center-of-mass energy of the photon-proton system has a maximum, whose position depends on the virtuality of the photon and the mass of the vector meson. We use these maxima to define a geometrical saturation scale and find that it grows linearly with energy as a function of the scale of the process. This phenomenon can be studied at the proposed electron-ion colliders, JLEIC, eRHIC and LHeC.
We report on an energy-sensitive imaging detector for studying the fragmentation of polyatomic molecules in the dissociative recombination of fast molecular ions with electrons. The system is based on a large area (10 cm x 10 cm) position-sensitive, double-sided Si-strip detector with 128 horizontal and 128 vertical strips, whose pulse height information is read out individually. The setup allows to uniquely identify fragment masses and is thus capable of measuring branching ratios between different fragmentation channels, kinetic energy releases, as well as breakup geometries, as a function of the relative ion-electron energy. The properties of the detection system, which has been installed at the TSR storage ring facility of the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, is illustrated by an investigation of the dissociative recombination of the deuterated triatomic hydrogen cation D2H+. A huge isotope effect is observed when comparing the relative branching ratio between the D2+H and the HD+D channel; the ratio 2B(D2+H)/B(HD+D), which is measured to be 1.27 +/- 0.05 at relative electron-ion energies around 0 eV, is found to increase to 3.7 +/- 0.5 at ~5 eV.
Different computational methods are employed to evaluate elastic (rotationally summed) integral and differential cross sections for low energy (below about 10 eV) positron scattering off gas-phase C$_2$H$_2$ molecules. The computations are carried out at the static and static-plus-polarization levels for describing the interaction forces and the correlation-polarization contributions are found to be an essential component for the correct description of low-energy cross section behavior. The local model potentials derived from density functional theory (DFT) and from the distributed positron model (DPM) are found to produce very high-quality agreement with existing measurements. On the other hand, the less satisfactory agreement between the R-matrix (RM) results and measured data shows the effects of the slow convergence rate of configuration-interaction (CI) expansion methods with respect to the size of the CI-expansion. To contrast the positron scattering findings, results for electron-C$_2$H$_2$ integral and differential cross sections, calculated with both a DFT model potential and the R-matrix method, are compared and analysed around the shape resonance energy region and found to produce better internal agreement.
Motivated by the huge need of data for non-equilibrium plasma modeling, a theoretical investigation of dissociative electron attachment to the NO molecule is performed. The calculations presented here are based on the Local-Complex-Potential approach, taking into account five NO$^-$ resonances. Three specific channels of the process are studied, including the production of excited nitrogen atoms $mathrm{N}(^2mathrm{D})$ and of its anions N$^-$. Interpretation of the existing experimental data and their comparison with our theoretical result are given. A full set of ro-vibrationally-resolved cross sections and the corresponding rate coefficients are reported. In particular, a relatively notably large cross section of N$^-$ ion formation at low energy of the incident electron and for vibrationally excited NO target is predicted. Finally, molecular rotation effects are discussed.