Photodissociation of trapped mathrm{H}_{2}^{+} ions for REMPD spectroscopy

We study the photodissociation of trapped $mathrm{H}_{2}^{+}$ ions by 248?nm light from an excimer laser. Our results are in good agreement with calculated populations and photodissociation cross sections of the involved vibrational levels and yield a determination of the ion cloud radius. These data are used to obtain a reliable estimate of the efficiency of the resonance-enhanced multiphoton dissociation (REMPD) scheme in our $mathrm{H}_{2}^{+}$ vibrational spectroscopy experiment. We go on to estimate the expected signal-to-noise ratio and discuss future improvements of the experimental setup.