H₃⁺ Formation from Cyclopropane

H₃⁺ is a triatomic cation found in interstellar medium that can act as a proton donor to form water and small organic molecules. These products are crucial to begin the formation of stars and highlight the importance of H₃⁺ in interstellar chemistry. Examining H₃⁺ formation dynamics grants a better understanding of the chemical dynamics of this ion in space through various mechanisms. Previous literature has looked at the formation of H₃⁺ from cyclopropane experimentally and suggested that H₃⁺ formation resulted from a concerted grouping of three hydrogen atoms via a ‘ring-closing’ mechanism but did not measure the timescale of formation. In this study, the time of formation of H₃⁺ was measured to take place in 174 fs through strong-field double ionization followed by femtosecond time resolved disruptive probing. The focus of this study is to settle if the formation mechanism of H₃⁺ from cyclopropane is a roaming, concerted, or migration mechanism. Based on timescales of H₃⁺ from cyclopropane and time resolved data as well as mass spectra data from propane and propene, we hypothesize the reaction mechanism of H₃⁺ to be different from the concerted ring-closing.