Eur. Phys. J. D 34, 215-218 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2005-00145-2

Studies of ion energy and yield from argon clusters heated by intense femtosecond laser pulses

¹ Department of Physics, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, P.R. China
² Laboratory for High Intensity Optics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a shli@stu.edu.cn

Received: 6 September 2004
Published online: 13 July 2005

Abstract

Using time-of-flight spectrometry, the interaction of intense femtosecond laser pulses with argon clusters has been studied by measuring the energy and yield of emitted ions. With two different supersonic nozzles, the dependence of average ion energy on cluster size in a large range of has been measured. The experimental results indicate that when the cluster size , the average ion energy Coulomb explosion is the dominant expansion mechanism. Beyond this size, the average ion energy gets saturated gradually, the clusters exhibit a mixed Coulomb-hydrodynamic expansion behavior. We also find that with the increasing gas backing pressure, there is a maximum ion yield, the ion yield decreases as the gas backing pressure is further increased.