Fig. 2: Separation of bound and dissociating molecules and imaging of bending vibrations.

a Time-dependent KED of C⁺ ions for the C⁺/I⁴⁺/I⁵⁺ channel. The white dashed line marks the boundary (32 eV) used for separating signals from bound and dissociating molecules. The intensity in the region below the white line is scaled by a factor of 3 to increase the visibility of the dissociation channel. b, c MFMDs for bound (b) and dissociating (c) molecules (events within the red and green boxes centered at 500 fs in (a)). d Mean value of the momentum-space I-C-I angle ∡ICI^(M) (defined in red in panel (b)) as a function of NIR/X-ray delay for the C²⁺/I³⁺/I³⁺ channel. Squares represent the measured data and the grey solid line the simulated values. The error bars reflect the standard error of the mean. The numbers on the right axis show the values of the real-space angle ∡ICI^(R) corresponding to the simulated ∡ICI^(M) angles.