Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 3
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2014-50435-5

Regular Article

Fragmentation of uracil after electron capture by doubly charged ions

¹ Ioffe Institute, 26 Polytekhnicheskaya, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
² St Petersburg Polytechnic University, 29 Polytekhnicheskaya, 195251 St. Petersburg, Russia
³ St.Petersburg Academic university, Khlopina 8, 195220 St. Petersburg, Russia

^a e-mail: a.basalaev@mail.ioffe.ru

Received: 10 June 2014
Received in final form: 15 August 2014
Published online: 8 January 2015

Abstract

Single electron capture from molecular uracil (C₄H₄N₂O₂) by doubly-charged He²⁺, C²⁺, and O²⁺ atomic ions followed by the fragmentation of uracil ions has been studied using time-of-flight mass-spectrometry at the collision velocity range 0.13–0.65 a.u. The uracil ion fragmentation mechanism has been clarified by the arrival time correlation analysis for all ion-fragments produced in a single collision. Electron capture with ionization cross section has been determined from experiment. As shown, single electron capture in reaction of uracil with C²⁺ leads to high fragmentation probability of the resulting uracil ion. The role of electron core rearrangement in the C²⁺ and O²⁺ atomic ions is discussed.