Correlated formation of the excited states of recoil and scattered ions in multiple electron capture collision of Ar8+ with CO2 and OCS

Multiple ionization events induced by low energy collisions between Ar⁸⁺ projectiles and linear triatomic molecular targets, CO₂ and OCS, were studied in order to shed light on the correlation between the electronic states of the scattered ion and the ionic fragmentation processes. Position-sensitive time-of-flight measurements of all the recoil fragments, triggered by detection of a charge-selected scattered ion, allowed us to distinguish between ionic fragmentation processes in which different numbers of Auger electrons were emitted by the projectile, just after multiple electron capture. A strong correlation is found for triple capture collisions, between fragmentation with high kinetic energy and events when only single Auger electron emission takes place.