High-resolution electron-momentum spectroscopy of the valence orbitals of the benzene molecule

The binding-energy spectrum and electron-momentum spectra of valence orbitals of benzene were measured via a high-resolution electron-momentum spectrometer at incident energies of 600 and 1200 eV plus the binding energy. The experimental momentum profiles were compared with the results from a plane-wave impulse approximation (PWIA) calculation using Dyson orbitals obtained from symmetry-adapted-cluster configuration-interaction calculations. For the 1(e1g), 3(e2g), 3(e1u), and 2b(1u) orbitals, the discrepancy between the experimental distributions and the PWIA calculations was tentatively assigned to the distorted wave effects. The current high-resolution electron-momentum spectroscopy results provide the experimental benchmark for rigorous distorted-wave calculations about benzene in the future.