Single photon induced symmetry breaking of H2 dissociation

H{sub 2}, the smallest and most abundant molecule in the universe, has a perfectly symmetric ground state. What does it take to break this symmetry? Here we show that the inversion symmetry can be broken by absorption of a linearly polarized photon, which itself has inversion symmetry. In particular, the emission of a photoelectron with subsequent dissociation of the remaining H{sub 2}{sup +} fragment shows no symmetry with respect to the ionic H+ and neutral H atomic fragments. This result is the consequence of the entanglement between symmetric and antisymmetric H{sub 2}{sup +} states resulting from autoionization. The mechanisms behind this symmetry breaking are general for all molecules

Dynamics Of Multiply Charged Ion-atom Collisions: U³²⁺+Ne

Measurements and calculations are presented for the mean recoil-ion energies of Nei+ produced in 1.4 MeV u-1 (0.33 GeV) collisions of U32+ with Ne. Recoil-ion charge states i=1-8 have been observed; the mean recoil energies are low and do not exceed 1 eV until i\u3e6. Calculations employing a newly developed n-body classical trajectory Monte Carlo method are found to yield results in qualitative agreement with the recoil-ion experiment. Calculations also are presented for the ionisation and charge exchange cross sections, the projectile energy loss and the ejected-electron energy and angular spectra. The importance of fast ejected electrons in the dynamics of energetic multiply charged ion-atom collisions is noted