Abstract

Atomic clusters illuminated with ultrashort, high intensity lasers pulses might serve as bright sources of ultrashort duration, hard x-rays. Several experiments carried out by other authors indicate high conversion efficiencies of laser light into x-rays¹-³. The shape of the spectra are distinctively non-thermal and show evidence of multiple inner shell holes⁴. Moreover, very high charge states were generated by irradiation of clusters with ultrashort laser pulses⁵. These charge states were found to be significantly higher than those for equivalent laser pulses applied to atoms in the gas phase.

© 1996 Optical Society of America