Stable excited dication: trapping on the S1 state of formaldehyde dication after strong field ionization

• DOI: 10.1039/d2cp02604j
• Publication Date: 2022-07-20T13:41:35Z
• Authors: Vaibhav Singh; Chuan Cheng; Thomas Weinacht; Spiridoula Matsika
• Keywords: Dication; Photoexcitation; Potential energy surface

Combined theoretical and experimental work examines the dynamics of dication formaldehyde produced by strong field ionization. Trajectory surface hopping on first several singlet electronic states are used to examine relaxation pathways dissociation channels, while kinetic energy distributions after ionization deuterated confirm predictions. We find that excited state is stable, neither decays ground nor dissociates, even though higher lying directly dissociative. The stability explained its symmetry which does not allow for radiative or nonradiative transitions large barriers dissociate surface.