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Abstract

We present experimental results on the characteristic sharing of available excess energy, ranging from 11-221 eV, between two electrons in single-photon direct double ionization of He. An effective parametrization of the sharing distributions is presented along with an empirical model that describes the complete shape of the distribution based on a single experimentally determinable parameter. The measured total energy sharing distributions are separated into two distributions representing the shake-off and knock-out parts by simulating the sharing distribution curves expected from a pure wave collapse after a sudden removal of the primary electron. In this way, empirical knock-out distributions are extracted and both the shake-off and knock-out distributions are parametrized. These results suggest a simple method that can be applied to other atomic and molecular systems to experimentally study important aspects of the direct double ionization process.