Rectification of kinematic parameters of dissociative ionization derived from ion momentum spectra

Ion momentum spectrometers, which are commonly used devices for studying molecular dissociation, are lossy devices in that not all charged fragments are assuredly detected. Combined with the fact that neutrals are always undetected, this can result in a mixing of distinct dissociation channels. A dissociation event with all charged fragments may mimic an event where at least one fragment is neutral. As a result, an analysis of the dissociation channels identified using an ion pair coincidence map may result in misleading interpretations, especially when analyzing channels with both charged and neutral fragments. In this study, we present a method to rectify the distributions of kinematic parameters for such cases. The rectification method is discussed in the context of the (O+, C+, O) breakup channel of the CO22+ molecular ion. The distribution of the kinematic parameters after rectification exhibit stark differences from the raw distributions, emphasizing the need for rectification. A comparison of the rectified data with cases in the literature where such losses are estimated to be negligible, underline the efficacy of the method. •The influence of spectrometer losses on derived kinematic parameters is analysed•Lossy spectrometers can cause apparent mixing of complete and incomplete Coulombic channels.•A method for rectification of these shortcomings is presented.•The rectification is applied to the dissociation of the CO22+ molecular ion. [Display omitted]