Time-resolved laser Coulomb explosion imaging using few-cycle intense laser pulses: Application to exploding CS2 in highly charged states

Ion-coincidence momentum imaging of three-body Coulomb explosion of CS2, CS2z+ → Sp+ + Cq+ + Sr+ (z = p + q + r), in few-cycle intense laser fields (9 fs, ∼1015 W/cm2) is presented. It is shown that the momentum distributions of fragment ions produced from CS210+ are well reproduced by a classical explosion model incorporating the coordinate and momentum distributions of the initial ground vibrational state of CS2. On the other hand, a significant deviation is observed for CS23+ due to the non-Coulombic character of the potential energy surfaces. Coulomb explosion imaging is applied to real-time probing of Coulomb exploding CS2 in highly charged states, using a pair of intense few-cycle laser pulses. It is shown that the explosion proceeds in a different time scale depending on the charge state, mostly along the linear geometry during the bond-breaking of the two CS bonds.