Abstract

For dissociations producing two fragments, two bonds often are broken, and at least two bonds are broken for all dissociations that produce three fragments. Do the bonds break at the Same time in a concerted reaction, or do they break sequentially in a stepwise reaction? By (1) measuring vibrational, rotational and translational distributions of the fragments, (2) applying maximum entropy to determine the most probable joint probability distribution for the correlations between the two or three fragments, and (3) using this joint probability distribution to determine angular or impact parameter distributions, we show that physical chemistry can provide an answer.

© 1992 Optical Society of America