Dissociation of CO induced by He2+ ions:: I.: Fragmentation and kinetic energy release spectra

The dissociation of COq+ ions (q less than or equal to 3) produced in collisions of keV amu(-1) He2+ ions with CO has been studied by time-of-flight measurements. Both singles and coincidence time-of-flight techniques have been used to determine the kinetic energy release of the dissociating CO molecules. We describe the method to transform the singles and coincidence time-of-flight spectra into total kinetic energy distributions and discuss these distributions. They represent kinetic energy release distributions which clearly exhibit various contributions associated with different dissociation channels. In comparison with other ionization methods similarities but also clear differences are noted.