Neutral dissociation of hydrogen following photoexcitation of HCl at the chlorineKedge

Time-of-flight mass spectroscopy was used to study the relaxation dynamics of HCl following photoexcitation in the vicinity of the Cl K edge ({approximately}2.8keV) using monochromatic synchrotron radiation. At the lowest resonant excitation to the 6{sigma}{sup {asterisk}} antibonding orbital, almost half of the excited molecules decay by emission of a neutral H atom, mostly in coincidence with a highly charged Cl{sup n+} ion. The present work demonstrates that neutral-atom emission can be a significant decay channel for excited states with very short lifetimes (1 fs). {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}