The technique of charged particle imaging for photodissociation, introduced by Chandler and Houston in 1987,¹provides a method for the simultaneous determination of all particle speeds, including the complete angular distribution. Application of this technique has expanded rapidly following the seminal paper by Eppink and Parker², which described an electrostatic lens design capable of imaging a finite sized interaction region to yield images from which more detailed information could be derived.

Our implementation of a velocity-map imaging lens, located co-axial with the ion-beam of a negative-ion photofragment spectrometer, yields photodetachment spectra of gas-phase anions which demonstrate an energy resolutionΔE/E = 0.32%^3,4. This is superior to any alternative photoelectron experimental technique and it represents a significant achievement for imaging methods.

The Honours projects will be a component of the objective to study photodetachment spectroscopy of radicals. The projects will provide exposure to a broad range of physics fields, including ion (production, transport), lasers (YAG, OPO), imaging (VMI, CCD), computational (data analysis, Abel inversion), spectroscopy and chemical reaction dynamics.

References:

1. Chandler D W& Houston P L 1987, Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 87, pp. 1445-1447.
2. `Eppink A T J B& Parker D H 1997, Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 68, pp. 3477-3484.
3.http://physics.anu.edu.au/ampl/research/chemicalpage1.php.
4. S. J. Cavanagh, S. T. Gibson, M. N. Gale, C. J. Dedman, E. H. Roberts, and B. R. Lewis 2007, Physical Review A, vol. 76, p 052708.