Ion Induced Fragmentation of Diatomic Molecular Clusters

Weakly bound atomic or molecular clusters are of growing interest in the fields of atmospheric science, hadron-therapy or astrophysics. We will present our recent experimental results on the fragmentation of diatomic molecular dimers after irradiation by highly charged ions. For (N-2)(2) dimers, the measured KER spectrum is very similar to the one of the N-2 monomers but is globally shifted towards higher energies. Moreover, sequential dissociation of the (CO)(2) dimers has been observed when metastable states of the CO2+ dications are populated.