Hannover 2016 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 10: Atomic clusters II (with A)
MO 10.3: Talk
Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 15:00–15:15, f107
Slow electrons from intense NIR laser-cluster interactions — •B. Schütte1,2, M. Arbeiter3, T. Fennel3, A. I. Kuleff4, J. Lahl5,6, T. Oelze5, M. Krikunova5, D. R. Austin1, C. Strüber1, P. Ye1, M. J. J. Vrakking2, J. P. Marangos1, and A. Rouzée2 — 1Imperial College London, UK — 2Max-Born-Institut Berlin, Germany — 3Universität Rostock, Germany — 4Universität Heidelberg, Germany — 5TU Berlin, Germany — 6Lund University, Sweden
Clusters in intense NIR fields absorb laser energy extremely efficiently, resulting in the observation of keV electrons. Here we report on a surprisingly dominant contribution of slow electrons with kinetic energies <2 eV following the ionization of rare-gas clusters by NIR pulses (I=5× 1014 W/cm2). Our THz streaking results reveal that these electrons are emitted with a significant delay in the picosecond to nanosecond range. We show that the emission of slow electrons can be expected from correlated electronic decay (CED) [1], which may involve autoionization processes [2]. In comparison to CED, where one electron relaxes from a Rydberg state to the ground state and transfers its excess energy to a nearby electron [1], the rates of intra-Rydberg CED processes can be orders of magnitude larger, and are associated with slow-electron emission. Our results may be the key to explaining the emission of highly charged ions from clusters that are observed in spite of the very efficient recombination of ions and electrons [3].
[1] B. Schütte et al., Nat. Commun. 6, 8596 (2015).
[2] B. Schütte et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 123002 (2015).
[3] B. Schütte et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 253401 (2014).