Hydrogenated pyrene : Statistical single-carbon loss below the knockout threshold

• An ongoing discussion revolves around the question of what effect hydrogenation has oncarbon backbone fragmentation in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In order to shedmore light on this issue, we have measured absolute single carbon loss cross sections incollisions between native or hydrogenated pyrene cations (C16H+ 10+m , m = 0, 6, 16) and He as functions of center-of-massenergies down to 20 eV. Classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations give further insightinto energy transfer processes and also yield m-dependent threshold energies for prompt(femtoseconds) carbon knockout. Such fast, non-statistical fragmentation processesdominate CH x -loss for native pyrene (m = 0), while much slowerstatistical fragmentation processes contribute significantly to single-carbon loss for thehydrogenated molecules (m =6 and m =16). The latter is shown by measurements of large CH x -loss crosssections far below the MD knockout thresholds for C16H+ 16 and C16H+ 26.

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NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences (hsv//eng)

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Physics

fysik

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