Spin-Polarized Hydrogen Atoms from Molecular Photodissociation
T. P. Rakitzis,1,3*
P. C. Samartzis,2,3
R. L. Toomes,3
T. N. Kitsopoulos,2,3
Alex Brown,4
G. G. Balint-Kurti,5
O. S. Vasyutinskii,6
J. A. Beswick7
The production of spin-polarized hydrogen atoms from the photodissociation of hydrogen chloride with circularly polarized 193-nanometer light is inferred from the measurement of the complete angular momentum distributions of ground state Cl(2P3/2)and excited state Cl(2P1/2)cofragments by slice imaging. The experimentally measured and ab initio predicted 
(p)parameters, which describe the single-surface and multiple-surface-interference contributions to the angular momentum distributions, are in excellent agreement. For laser pulses longer than about 0.7 ns, the polarization of the electron and the proton are both 36%.
1 Department of Physics, University of Crete, Heraklion-Crete, Greece.
2 Department of Chemistry, University of Crete, Heraklion-Crete, Greece.
3 Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology–Hellas, 71110 Heraklion-Crete, Greece.
4 Department of Chemistry and Cherry L. Emerson Center for Scientific Computation, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
5 School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TS, UK.
6 Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia.
7 Laboratoire de Collisions, Agrégats de Réactivité, Institut de Recherche sur les Systèmes Atomiques et Moléculaires Complexes, Université Paul Sabetier, 31062 Toulouse, France.
Permanent address: Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2G2, Canada.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ptr{at}iesl.forth.gr
