Free electron laser induced dissociation of molecules probed with synchrotron radiation

Photodissociation of isolated polyatomic molecules is of great interest not only for itself but also because it is closely related to various important areas such as photochemistry, combustion phenomena, atmospheric pollution, interstellar chemistry and isotope separation. Considerable progresses was made in the 70's by the extensive use of lasers for a very selective excitation of the molecule. State to state correlations between the various steps of dissociation dynamics have been achieved by a combination of various techniques to probe the dissociation products, such as laser induced fluorescence, VUV ionization, resonant multiphoton ionization, coherent anti-stokes Raman spectroscopy, V-V transfert, IR or visible fluorescence or mass spectrometry associated with molecular beam technique. At this time, available lasers are not tunable over a wide range in the UV, thus limiting the species of molecules that can be studied