Abstract

Gas clusters irradiated with ultrashort, high intensity laser pulses can exhibit “ionization ignition” which leads to very high charge states that are significantly higher than those for equivalent laser pulses applied to atoms in the gas phase [1,2]. Moreover, such laser generated plasmas from clusters might serve as bright sources of ultrashort duration, hard x-rays [3-5]. Experimental shapes of the x-ray emission spectra are distinctly non-thermal and show evidence of multiple inner shell holes [6] and high electron kinetic energies [7].

© 1997 Optical Society of America