Electron-Ion Covariance Reveals Geometry-Resolved Inner-Shell Spectra in CS2 Photodissociation

The chemical shifts of inner-shell atomic orbitals are highly sensitive to chemical bonding and molecular structure. In evolving systems, however, the spectra of distinct molecular species and geometries overlap, obscuring the underlying chemical dynamics. Here we demonstrate the use of electron-ion covariance analysis to combine the structural sensitivity of Coulomb explosion imaging with inner-shell spectroscopy, yielding geometry-specific spectra of transient and product species. We apply this approach to the excited state dynamics of CS2 probed by ionization above the S 2p edge. Electron-ion covariance with time- and momentum-selected S+ and S2+ ions isolates distinct S 2p photoelectron spectra for ground-state CS2, bent photoexcited CS2, the CS photoproduct, and bare atomic sulfur ─ species whose spectra overlap strongly in the channel-averaged measurement. Clear chemical shifts are observed in the covariance photoelectron spectrum for each of these species, all of which are consistent with high-level calculations. By extracting the atomic S contribution to the photoelectron spectrum in a finely time-resolved manner we can disentangle this contribution to the overall time-resolved photoelectron spectrum as the photodissociation proceeds. These results demonstrate the promise of electron-ion covariance as a general approach to geometry-resolved inner-shell spectroscopy, opening a route to tracking structural evolution through chemical shifts in complex photoexcited molecules.