Multiple ionization and fragmentation of CH4 in collisions with slow highly charged ions

Abstract The multiple ionization and fragmentation of methane was studied in collisions with slow highly charged Xe-ions utilizing a position- and time-sensitive multi-particle detector. The coincident measurement of the momenta of correlated fragment ions allows a detailed analysis of the fragmentation kinematics and the kinetic energy release can be derived for each break-up into charged fragments. Among the observed processes the spectra for H +  + CH 3 + and H 2 +  + CH 2 + showed the highest sensitivity to projectile characteristics.