Selective vibrational excitation in the resonant Auger decay following core-to- transitions in NO

Travnikova, O.*; Colin, D.*; Bao, Z.*; Brve, K. J.*; Tanaka, Takahiro*; Hoshino, Masamitsu*; Kato, Hideki*; Tanaka, Hiroshi*; Harries, J.; Tamenori, Yusuke*; Prmper, G.*; Lischke, T.*; Liu, X.-J.*; Piancastelli, M. N.*; Ueda, Kiyoshi*

In NO a detailed study of the vibrational distribution of the state reached after decay of core-to- excitation of N terminal, N central and O 1s core levels is reported. We observe a change in the relative intensity of bending versus stretching modes while scanning the photon energy across all three resonances. While this effect is known to be due to the Renner-Teller splitting in the core-excited states, we could derive that the antisymmetric stretching is excited mainly in the decay of the N terminal 1s-to- excitation. An explanation for such selectivity is provided in terms of interplay of vibrational structure on potential energy surfaces of different electronic states involved in the process.