Abstract

The interaction of intense laser pulses with gases of atomic clusters of a few hundred to a few thousand atoms each has received considerable attention in the scientific literature during the past three years. This has been motivated by the possibility of producing very high temperature plasmas using small scale Users. Recent experimental studies indicate that the irradiation of these subwavelength sized atomic clusters with intense, ultrashort (<1 ps) laser pulses is extremely energetic. For example, high x-ray yields have been observed from the irradiation of gases containing atomic clusters, results which suggested that the electron temperatures achieved in these plasmas may be in the keV range [1,2].

© 1998 IEEE