Fragmentation dynamics of nitric oxide induced by low-energy heavy ions

We study the fragmentation of NO^q+ (q = 2,3) molecular ions produced by collisions between 96 keV O⁶⁺ ions and neutral nitric oxide (NO) molecules, using the cold target recoil ion momentum spectrometer (COLTRIMS). The kinetic energy release (KER) for various dissociation channels is obtained. For the channel NO²⁺ → N⁺ + O⁺, double-electron capture followed by autoionization of the projectile ions is the dominant process, which can be explained by the recapture of loosely bound electrons into highly excited states of the target. For NO³⁺ trication, two dissociation channels, i.e., (a) N⁺ + O²⁺ and (b) N²⁺ + O⁺, are observed, where channel (b) is the dominant channel. Moreover, for dissociation channels originating from the same parent molecular ion, the dissociation channel with a higher charge for the oxygen ion fragment exhibits a higher most probable KER, which is consistent with studies of CO fragmentation by Rajput et al. Additionally, it is observed that as capture stability increases, the average KER shifts to higher values.