Ion imaging the recoil energy distribution following vibrational predissociation of triplet state pyrazine–Ar van der Waals clusters

The ion imaging technique has been used to determine the recoil energy distribution of triplet pyrazine fragments following vibrational predissociation of pyrazine–Ar van der Waals clusters containing ∼4000 cm−1 of vibrational energy. The 2-dimensional image of the isotropic recoil distribution was converted to a radial velocity distribution using an analytical inverse Abel transform. The recoil probability distribution is found to be a monotonically decreasing function of energy, with an average recoil of ∼95 cm−1. Information theory is used to interpret the experimental results.