Eur. Phys. J. D (2012) 66: 114
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30077-5

Regular Article

Electron-ion collision rates in noble gas clusters irradiated by femtosecond laser pulse

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, EURATOM Association, Boltzmannstr. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
² School of Mathematical Sciences, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, 711202 Belur Math, West Bengal, India

^a e-mail: ritud@ipp.mpg.de

Received: 30 January 2012
Published online: 17 May 2012

Abstract

We report a theoretical analysis of electron-ion collision rates in xenon gas clusters irradiated by femtosecond laser pulses. The present analysis is based on the eikonal approximation (EA), the first Born approximation (FBA) and the classical (CL) methods. The calculations are performed using the plasma-screened Rogers potential introduced by Moll et al. [J. Phys. B. 43, 135103 (2010)] as well as the Debye potential for a wide range of experimental parameters. We find that the magnitudes of electron-ion collision frequency obtained in the EA do not fall as rapidly with the kinetic energy of electrons as in the FBA and CL methods for higher charge states of xenon ion (Xe⁸⁺ and Xe¹⁴⁺). Furthermore, EA shows that the effect of the inner structure of ion is most dominant for the lowest charge state of xenon ion (Xe¹⁺). In the case of the present effective potential, FBA overestimates the CL results for all three different charge states of xenon, whereas for the Debye potential, both the FBA and CL methods predict collision frequencies which are nearly close to each other.