Investigation of the single ionization of molecular iodine using velocity map imaging

We study the strong-field single ionization of iodine using velocity map imaging and find several distinct dissociation pathways leading to $I_{2} \to I^{+} + I$. To identify the molecular orbital from which the electron is removed we measured the kinetic energy release of the dissociation pathways as a function of laser wavelength, intensity, and polarization. We find that the many of these channels are not consistent with ionization from the first three valence orbitals of $I_{2}$.