Present status of Coulomb explosion imaging study at TMUECRIS

Explosive fragmentation of highly charged molecular ions has been studied by a position sensitive time-of-flight (TOF) technique. The highly charged molecular ions of CO2, CS2, NO2, and CD4 were produced by 90–120 keV collisions of Ar (n = 6, 8). By the detailed analysis of the 3-dimensional velocity vectors of the fragment ions, molecular images at the instant of multiple ionization are “reconstructed”, which are consistent with known structure of the neutral molecules. This in turn means that the dissociation of the highly charged ions is reasonably described by the pure Coulomb explosion scheme.