Electron impact ionization of C60 revisited: corrected absolute cross section functions

Collective mode properties in a paired fullerene-ion plasma

A pair-ion plasma without electrons consisting of C60+ and C60- is generated through the processes of electron-impact ionization, electron attachment, and magnetic filtering. Properties of electrostatic modes propagating along magnetic-field lines are experimentally investigated by externally exciting them with two types of electrodes. It is found that four kinds of wave modes exist and a frequency spectrum of phase lag between the density fluctuations of C60+ and C60- is unique in comparison with ordinary electron-ion plasmas. One of the modes is an ion acoustic wave which is divided into two branches at around the ion cyclotron frequency in the presence of a backwardlike mode joining them. The phase lag of the ion acoustic wave strongly depends on the frequency, while those for the other ion plasma and intermediate-frequency waves are constant at pi independent of the frequency.

C60 in intense short pulse laser fields down to 9fs: Excitation on time scales below e-e and e-phonon coupling

The interaction of C60 fullerenes with 765-797 nm laser pulses as short as 9 fs at intensities of up to 3.7 x 10(14) W cm(-2) is investigated with photoion spectroscopy. The excitation time thus addressed lies well below the characteristic time scales for electron-electron and electron-phonon couplings. Thus, energy deposition into the system is separated from energy redistribution among the various electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom. Insight into fundamental photoinduced processes such as ionization and fragmentation is obtained from the analysis of the resulting mass spectra as a function of pulse duration, laser intensity, and time delay between pump and probe pulses, the latter revealing a memory effect for storing electronic energy in the system with a relaxation time of about 50 fs. Saturation intensities and relative abundances of (multiply charged) parent and fragment ions (C60(q+), q=1-6) are fingerprints for the ionization and fragmentation mechanisms. The observations indicate that for final charge states q>1 the well known C60 giant plasmon resonance is involved in creating ions and a significant amount of large fragments even with 9 fs pulses through a nonadiabatic multielectron dynamics. In contrast, for energetic reasons singly charged ions are generated by an essentially adiabatic single active electron mechanism and negligible fragmentation is found when 9 fs pulses are used. These findings promise to unravel a long standing puzzle in understanding C60 mass spectra generated by intense femtosecond laser pulses.

Manifestation of charge-density fluctuations in metal clusters: suppression of the ionization channel

The fluctuations in the electronic charge density of metallic clusters in response to an approaching electron suppress the single-ionization channel. This conclusion is made on the basis of numerical calculations for the total ionization cross sections using the random-phase approximation with exchange to describe the particle-hole (de)excitations. The general trends can be understood by means of the Thomas-Fermi model. The present theory explains, for the first time, the behavior of the measured total ionization cross section for C(60). The interplay between finite size and non-local screening effects is studied by tracing the changes in the ionization cross sections for Li clusters with an increasing cluster radius.

Delayed ionization and fragmentation en route to thermionic emission: statistics and dynamics

Thermionic emission is discussed as a long time (microseconds) decay mode of energy-rich large molecules, metallic and metcar clusters, and fullerenes. We review what is known and consider the many experiments, systems, and theoretical and computational studies that still need to be done. We conclude with a wish list for future work. Particular attention is given to the experimental signatures, such as the dependence on the mode of energy acquisition, and theoretical indications of a not-quite-statistical delayed ionization and to the competition of electron emission with other decay modes, such as fragmentation or radiative cooling. Coupling of the electronic and nuclear modes can be a bottleneck and quite long time-delayed ionization can be observed, as in the decay of high Rydberg states probed by ZEKE spectroscopy, before the onset of complete energy partitioning.