Correlation between Electron Emission and Fragmentation into Ions following Soft-X-Ray Excitation of theN2Molecule

The authors present the first simultaneous studies of fragment ion production and electron emission of a molecule following deep core-level excitation. Using synchrotron radiation they tune in to various absorption resonances and correlate certain electron-hole states in the decay of the x-ray excitation with the appearance of specific ionic fragments. For ${\mathrm{N}}_2$ specifically they observe a 1:1 correspondence between single valence hole states and undissociated ${\mathrm{N}}_2^{+}$ after N $1s\to {\pi }^{*}$ excitation and relate the production of ${\mathrm{N}}^{++}$ ions to the generation of holes in the $2{\sigma }_{\mathrm{u}}$ orbital.