Three-body fragmentation dynamics of carbon-dioxide dimers induced by intense femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract We experimentally studied three-body fragmentation dynamics of ( CO 2 ) 2 3 + generated by intense femtosecond laser fields. Three-dimensional momentum vectors as well as kinetic energies were measured for correlated fragmental ions using the technology of coincidence measurement. The results demonstrate that sequential fragmentation channel dominates for three-body fragmentation of ( CO 2 ) 2 3 + , in which the weak van der Waals bond breaks first and then one strong covalent bond.