Photofragment translational spectroscopy of 1,2-butadiene at 193 nm

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Photofragment translational spectroscopy has been used to investigate the dissociation dynamics of 1,2-butadiene at 193 nm. Ionization of scattered photoproducts was accomplished using tunable VUV synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Light Source. Two product channels are observed: CH3+C3H3 and C4H5+H. The C3H3 product can be identified as the propargyl radical through measurement of its photoionization efficiency curve, whereas the C4H5 product cannot be identified definitively. The translational energy P(ET) distributions suggest that both channels result from internal conversion to the ground electronic state followed by dissociation. The P(ET) distribution for the C4H5 product is sharply truncated below 7 kcal/mol, indicating spontaneous decomposition of the slowest C4H5 product.