Dynamics of photo-activated Coulomb complexes

Abstract

Intense light with frequencies above typical atomic or molecular ionization potentials as provided by free-electron lasers couples many photons into extended targets such as clusters and biomolecules. This implies, in contrast to traditional multi-photon ionization, multiple single-photon absorption. Thereby, many electrons are removed from their bound states and either released or trapped if the target charge has become sufficiently large. We develop a simple model for this photo activation to study electron migration and interaction. It satisfies scaling relations which help to relate quite different scenarios. To understand this type of multi-electron dynamics on very short time scales is vital for assessing the radiation damage inflicted by that type of radiation and to pave the way for coherent diffraction imaging of single molecules.

14 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (3)

• Ionization of clusters in strong X-ray laser pulses
• Ionization heating in rare-gas clusters under intense XUV laser pulses
• Ionization and charge migration through strong internal fields in clusters exposed to intense X-ray pulses

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Efficient electronic structure calculation for molecular ionization dynamics at high x-ray intensity
• Rare-gas clusters in intense VUV, XUV and soft x-ray pulses: Signatures of the transition from nanoplasma-driven cluster expansion to Coulomb explosion in ion and electron spectra
• Many-electron dynamics triggered by massively parallel ionization
• Proton ejection from molecular hydride clusters exposed to strong X-ray pulses
• Effect of two-particle correlations on x-ray coherent diffractive imaging studies performed with continuum models
• Spatial correlations in finite samples revealed by Coulomb explosion
• Prevailing features of X-ray induced molecular electron spectra revealed with fullerenes
• Slow electrons from clusters in strong Xray pulses