Knowledge Bank

$CH4$, $C2H4$ and $C2H6$ are dissociated by electron impact and high-Rydberg fragments are produced. Kinetic energy distributions and appearance potential measurements are used to study excited state of the parent molecules. Good agreement is found between high Rydberg dissociation and mass spectrometric experiments. This extends the applicability of the core ion model for high Rydberg dissociation to polyatomic molecules.