Unimolecular reaction dynamics from kinetic energy release distributions.IV. Dissociation of the Pyridine ion.

The kinetic energy release distribution (KERD) for the dissociation of the Pyridine ion into C4H4++HCN in the microsecond time window has been experimentally determined and theoretically analyzed by the maximum entropy method. Less energy is channeled into the reaction coordinate than the statistical estimate because of the action of the "moentum gap law". The larger the value of the relative translational momentum of the fragments, the less efficient the exploration of phase space. the fraction of phase space efficiently sampled is estimated to be of the order of 75%.