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Shock shells in Coulomb explosions of nanoclusters
A E Kaplan1, B Y Dubetsky, P L Shkolnikov
1Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|November 13, 2003
Abstract:
We predict that Coulomb explosion of a nanoscale cluster, which is ionized by high-intensity laser radiation and has a naturally occurring spatial density profile, will invariably produce shock waves. In most typical situations, two shocks, a leading and a trailing one, form a shock shell that eventually encompasses the entire cluster. Being the first example of shock waves on the nanometer scale, this phenomenon promises interesting effects and applications, including high-rate nuclear reactions inside each individual cluster.