Spectroscopic characterization of a thermodynamically stable doubly charged diatomic molecule: MgAr2+

Although numerous doubly positively charged diatomic molecules (diatomic dications) are known from investigations using mass spectrometry and ab initio quantum chemistry, only three of them, NO2+, N22+ and DCl2+, have been studied using rotationally resolved optical spectroscopy and only about a dozen by vibrationally resolved double-ionization methods. So far, no thermodynamically stable diatomic dication has been characterized spectroscopically, primarily because of experimental difficulties associated with their synthesis in sufficient densities in the gas phase. Indeed, such molecules typically involve, as constituents, rare-gas, halogen, chalcogen, and metal atoms. We report here on a new approach to characterize molecular dications based on high-resolution photoelectron spectroscopy of the singly charged parent molecular cation and present the first spectroscopic characterization of a thermodynamically stable diatomic dication, MgAr2+. From the fully resolved vibrational and partially resolved rotational structures of the photoelectron spectra of 24MgAr+ and 26MgAr+, we determined the potential-energy function of the electronic ground state of MgAr2+, its dissociation (binding) energy (D0 = 10 690(3) cm−1), and its harmonic (ωe(24MgAr2+) = 327.02(11) cm−1) and anharmonic (ωexe(24MgAr2+) = 2.477(15) cm−1) vibrational constants. The analysis enables us to explain quantitatively how the strong bond arises in this dication despite the fact that Ar and Mg2+ both have a full-shell rare-gas electronic configuration.