Photodissociation of bromine molecule near 265 nm

The photodissociation of Br2 has been studied near 265 nm with the two dimensional photofragment imaging technique. Speed and angular distributions of state-selected Br(2P3/2, 1/2) fragments are obtained from analyzing the center-stripe intensity profile, corresponding to the projection of the center slice of a three dimensional velocity distribution with cylindrical symmetry. They clearly show the photoexcitation to an upper Ω=1u level and dissociation into the Br(2P3/2) + Br*(2P1/2) channel, predominantly. The excited level is assigned to the 1441 3Σu+(1u) state based on the prediction from the molecular orbital theory and the analogous works on the C band photodissociation of I2.