• Accepted Paper

Ultrafast dissociation of water producing atomic oxygen following excitation above the O 1s threshold

Florian Trinter, Stephan Thürmer, Qi Zhou, Uwe Hergenhahn, Bernd Winter, Olle Björneholm, Maxim Tchaplyguine, Ludger Inhester, and Gunnar Öhrwall

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 8 September, 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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