Abstract
Intense radiation from lasers has opened up many new areas of research in physics and chemistry, and has revolutionized optical technology. So far, most work in the field of nonlinear processes has been restricted to infrared, visible and ultraviolet light1, although progress in the development of X-ray lasers has been made recently2. With the advent of a free-electron laser in the soft-X-ray regime below 100 nm wavelength3, a new light source is now available for experiments with intense, short-wavelength radiation that could be used to obtain deeper insights into the structure of matter. Other free-electron sources with even shorter wavelengths are planned for the future. Here we present initial results from a study of the interaction of soft X-ray radiation, generated by a free-electron laser, with Xe atoms and clusters. We find that, whereas Xe atoms become only singly ionized by the absorption of single photons, absorption in clusters is strongly enhanced. On average, each atom in large clusters absorbs up to 400 eV, corresponding to 30 photons. We suggest that the clusters are heated up and electrons are emitted after acquiring sufficient energy. The clusters finally disintegrate completely by Coulomb explosion.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the TTF team at DESY, especially P. Castro, M. Minty, D. Nölle, H. Schlarb and S. Schreiber, for running the accelerator; we also thank J. R. Schneider for support and discussions. The first group of authors (H.W. to T.M.) built the apparatus for the cluster experiment and performed the experiment; the second group of authors (B.F. to M.Y) worked on the FEL and the diagnostics. We thank K.H. Meiwes-Broer, T. Brabec, C. Rose-Petruck, J. Krzywinski, M. Lezius, I. Kostyukov, J.M. Rost, E. Rühl, U. Saalman, J. Jortner and M. Smirnov and their research groups for discussions and comments, and J. Sutter for critically reading the manuscript. This work was supported by the DFG.
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Wabnitz, H., Bittner, L., de Castro, A. et al. Multiple ionization of atom clusters by intense soft X-rays from a free-electron laser. Nature 420, 482–485 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01197
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01197
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