Highly ionized but weakly excited metal clusters in collisions with multicharged ions

Abstract

We describe the dynamics of electrons during and after the collision at large impact parameters between a highly charged ion and a cluster of from a few ten up to several hundred alkali-metal atoms. The theoretical model gives the time evolution of the electronic one-body phase-space density as the solution of the self-consistent Vlasov equation. It allows us to predict the ionization state and the excitation energy of the cluster after collision. We demonstrate that with sufficiently charged ions it is possible to ionize metal clusters close to their Rayleigh charge limit without significant heating, thus providing a unique method to investigate charge instabilities in clusters.