Cluster explosion in an intense laser pulse

Radiation Physics and Chemistry 68, 273 (2003)

Marian Rusek, Hervé Lagadecb and Thomas Blenskib

This manuscript addresses a hot topic in the field of cluster physics: the explosion of rare-gas atomic clusters induced by short, intense laser pulses. Within the Thomas–Fermi model we have developed an numerical approach for an explicitly time-dependent description of small to medium size clusters in 3D. Such an approach, though strongly simplified in comparison to fully quantum-mechanical schemes, is nevertheless expected to yield a qualitatively correct description of the electronic and ionic dynamics of these systems, at a much lower computational cost.