Dynamics of Coulomb explosion of large Xe clusters irradiated by a super-intense ultra-short laser pulse

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Abstract
Dynamics of large Xe clusters irradiated by a super-intense ultra-short laser pulse is investigated within the frames of the simple Bethe model. Inner and outer classical above-barrier multiple ionization of the clusters, and also the Coulomb expansion of the cluster ion are calculated. As a typical example we consider a Xe cluster with 1000 atoms irradiated by a laser pulse with the wavelength 800 nm, pulse duration 100 fs and the peak intensity 1016 W cm-2. We found that electrons do not absorb practically the energy from the external electromagnetic field in the process of elastic reflection from the inner cluster surface or at the collisions with the atomic ions inside the cluster. The heating of electrons is determined by their electrostatic Coulomb energy which is transformed into the kinetic energy after ejection of electrons from the cluster.