High resolution electron momentum spectroscopy of dichlorodifluoromethane: Unambiguous assignments of outer valence molecular orbitals

Development of an electron momentum spectrometer for time-resolved experiments employing nanosecond pulsed electron beam

The low count rate of (e, 2e) electron momentum spectroscopy (EMS) has long been a major limitation of its application to the investigation of molecular dynamics. Here we report a new EMS apparatus developed for time-resolved experiments in the nanosecond time scale, in which a double toroidal energy analyzer is utilized to improve the sensitivity of the spectrometer and a nanosecond pulsed electron gun with a repetition rate of 10 kHz is used to obtain an average beam current up to nA. Meanwhile, a picosecond ultraviolet laser with a repetition rate of 5 kHz is introduced to pump the sample target. The time zero is determined by photoionizing the target using a pump laser and monitoring the change of the electron beam current with time delay between the laser pulse and electron pulse, which is influenced by the plasma induced by the photoionization. The performance of the spectrometer is demonstrated by the EMS measurement on argon using a pulsed electron beam, illustrating the potential abilities of the apparatus for investigating the molecular dynamics in excited states when employing the pump-probe scheme.

Ring-puckering effects on electron momentum distributions of valence orbitals of oxetane

The binding energy spectra and electron momentum distributions for the outer-valence molecular orbitals of oxetane have been measured utilizing (e, 2e) electron momentum spectrometer with non-coplanar asymmetric geometry at the impact energy of 2500 eV. The experimental momentum distributions were compared with the density functional theory calculations employing B3LYP hybrid functional with aug-cc-pVTZ basis set. It was found that the calculation at planar geometry (C2v) completely fails to interpret the large "turn-up" at low momentum region in electron momentum distribution of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) 3b1, while the calculations considering the thermal abundances of planar (C2v) and bent (Cs) conformers or the thermally populated vibrational states of ring-puckering motion have significantly improved the agreement. The results indicate that the ring-puckering motion of oxetane has a strong effect on the electron density distribution of HOMO.

Observation of the interference effect in vibrationally resolved electron momentum spectroscopy of H2

We report the first measurement on vibrationally resolved electron momentum spectroscopy of H2 by using a high-resolution (e, 2e) spectrometer. The vibrational-specific experimental momentum profiles have been obtained and shown to be in agreement with calculations of (e, 2e) ionization cross sections taking into account the vibrational wave functions. Distinct deviations from Franck-Condon predictions have been observed in vibrational ratios of cross sections, which can readily be ascribed to the Young-type two-center interference. Unlike previous (e, 2e) work, the present observation of an interference effect does not rely on the comparison with the one-center atomic cross section.

A high-sensitivity angle and energy dipersive multichannel electron momentum spectrometer with 2π angle range

A high-sensitivity angle and energy dispersive multichannel electron momentum spectrometer with simultaneous detection in 2π angle range is presented. A newly designed double half wedge and strip anode position-sensitive detector is employed to collect the ionized and scattered electrons passing through a 90° sector, 2π spherical electrostatic analyzer over azimuthal angle range of about 150° for each. Experimental results on argon are presented to exhibit the performance of the spectrometer.