Native frames: Analyzing three-body fragmentation of CO$_2$*

Three-body fragmentation of molecules, and methods to analyze and interpret the results, have drawn much attention during the past several years. In this work, we employ the novel native-frames method to analyze and understand three-body fragmentation processes in CO$_2$. In our measurements, 3D momentum imaging is used to study different fragmentation channels resulting from the interaction of intense laser pulses with polyatomic molecules such as CO$_2$ and its ions . We demonstrate that, using the native-frames method, one gains access to detailed information about the fragmentation process by completely separating the concerted and sequential breakup contributions. We present the branching ratios of different competing processes as well as the angular dependence of the breakup channels. Also, the kinetic energy release in the fragmentation process is used to identify the states, of the parent or intermediate molecule, that are involved in the breakup.