Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

ULTRA-INTENSE PHOTONICS

Extreme ionization of gold atoms

Nature Photonics volume 14, pages 598–599 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Gold atoms are stripped of 72 of their electrons to form nitrogen-like Au72+ ions inside extremely hot plasmas by irradiating gold foils and nanowires with highly relativistic femtosecond laser pulses.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Highly relativistic, high-contrast second-harmonic laser pulses and a high critical electron density make it possible to deposit laser energy deep inside a gold target, thereby generating highly ionized atoms.

References

  1. Umstadter, D. Phys. Plasmas 8, 1774–1785 (2001).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Hollinger, R. et al. Nat. Photon. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0666-1 (2020).

  3. Wang, Y. et al. Opt. Lett. 42, 3828–3831 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Palaniyappan, S. et al. Nat. Phys. 8, 763–769 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Purvis, M. et al. Nat. Photon. 7, 796–800 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Moreau, A. et al. Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 62, 014013 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Bargsten, C. et al. Sci. Adv. 3, e1601558 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Optical Sciences Centre, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Lap Van Dao & Peter Hannaford

Authors
  1. Lap Van Dao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Peter Hannaford
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Lap Van Dao or Peter Hannaford.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Van Dao, L., Hannaford, P. Extreme ionization of gold atoms. Nat. Photonics 14, 598–599 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0694-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0694-x

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing