• M. Rusek, J. Krzywinski
  IP PAS, Warsaw

Explosion of small xenon clusters induced by short, intense short-wavelength pulses generated by a free-electron laser is studied theoretically using a Bloch-like hydrodynamic model. It is shown that energy is effectively absorbed by the plasma-like cloud of electrons bound to the cluster as a whole but released from individual atoms. During the Coulomb explosion of the cluster the energy acquired by the bound electrons moving freely inside the cluster is translated into kinetic energy of the outgoing ions. A lot of energy, however, is shown to stay in the excitations of individual outgoing ions. This is not measured in experiment where the absorbed energy is usually estimated based on the kinetic energy of the ions only.