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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
Published on: August 18, 2017
Coulomb Explosion Imaging for the Visualization of a Conical Intersection
M E Corrales1,2, J González-Vázquez3, R de Nalda4
1Departamento de Química Física (Unidad Asociada I+D+i al CSIC) , Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid , 28040 Madrid , Spain.
Abstract:
Coulomb explosion imaging is proposed as a method to directly map the presence of conical intersections encountered by a propagating wave packet in a molecular system. The case of choice is the nonadiabatic coupling between two dissociative surfaces in the methyl iodide molecule, probed by Coulomb explosion with short, intense near-infrared pulses causing multiple ionization. On-the-fly multidimensional trajectory calculations with surface hopping using perturbation theory and including spin-orbit coupling are performed to visualize the dynamics through the conical intersection and compare with experimental results. The possibilities and limitations of the technique are examined and discussed.
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