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Ultrafast Dissociation of Water Producing Atomic Oxygen following Excitation above the O 1s Threshold

Florian Trinter1,*, Stephan Thürmer2, Qi Zhou (周琪)1, Uwe Hergenhahn1, Bernd Winter1, Olle Björneholm3, Maxim Tchaplyguine4, Ludger Inhester5, and Gunnar Öhrwall4,†

  • *Contact author: trinter@fhi-berlin.mpg.de
  • †Contact author: gunnar.ohrwall@maxiv.lu.se
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 193002 – Published 5 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/c1hm-82p2

Abstract

We report ultrafast dissociation of gas-phase water following photoexcitation above the O 1s ionization threshold. High-resolution resonant Auger spectroscopy reveals sharp constant-kinetic-energy features arising from nonradiative decay of neutral atomic oxygen formed within the O 1s core-hole lifetime. Comparison with ab initio Auger spectra identifies these features as transitions from the atomic (1s)1(2s)2(2p)5 1P state, demonstrating that neutral fragments can form in well-defined electronic states before Auger decay.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 193002– Published 5 November, 2026
  • Received 10 December 2025
  • Revised 16 July 2026
  • Accepted 8 September 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

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