We investigate the role of the electronic structure of the projectile in collisional ionization and fragmentation of ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ via multielectron capture at 0.31 a.u. impact velocity. Focusing on the ${\text{CO}}_2^{3+}\to {\text{O}}^{+}:{\text{C}}^{+}:{\text{O}}^{+}$ break-up channel as a representative channel, we report kinetic energy release distributions (KERDs) for collisions with equivelocity ${\mathrm{N}}^{q+}$ and ${\mathrm{O}}^{q+}$ projectiles. We consider two complementary categories of measurements. In the first category, in which different projectiles of the same charge are considered, we find that KERDs obtained with ${\mathrm{N}}^{q+}$ and ${\mathrm{O}}^{q+}$ impact ($q=4,6$) are broadly similar, but they differ significantly from the earlier reported KERD with ${\mathrm{Ar}}^{q+}$ impact. In the second category, pronounced differences are observed between the KERDs obtained with isoelectronic ${\mathrm{N}}^{q+}$ and ${\mathrm{O}}^{(q+1)+}$ ($q=3,5,7$) projectiles. These results provide clear evidence that projectile electronic structure plays a critical role in multielectron capture collisions.

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• Atomic & molecular structure
• Molecular dissociation