Resonance Ionization Mass Spectrometry (RIMS) has been developed as a method to measure uranium isotope abundances. In this approach, RIMS is used as an element-selective ionization process between uranium atoms and potential isobars without the aid of chemical purification and separation. The use of broad bandwidth lasers with automated feedback control of wavelength was applied to the measure...

Evolution of atomic ionization into the strong-field limit offers the opportunity to study the fundamentals of atom-laser interaction. In this study, we report on high precision measurements of the ion and electron distributions from laser-excited helium and neon atoms which reflect the changing continuum dynamics as the ionization process evolves into the pure tunneling regime. The experiments...

Molecules show a much increased multiple ionization rate in a strong laser field as compared with atoms of similar ionization energy. A widely accepted model attributes this to the action of the joint fields of the adjacent ionic core and the laser on its neighbour inside the same molecule. The underlying physical picture for the enhanced ionization is that it is the up-field atom that gets ion...

The interaction of an intense laser field with a beam of atomic ions has been investigated experimentally for the first time. The ionization dynamics of Ar+ ions and Ar neutrals in a 60 fs, 790 nm laser pulse have been compared and contrasted at intensities up to 10(16) W cm-2. Our results show that nonsequential ionization from an Ar+ target is strongly suppressed compared with that from the c...

The laser produced plasma from the multi-component target YBa2Cu307 was analyzed using Michelson interferometry and time resolved emission spectroscopy. The interaction of 10 ns pulses of 1.06 #m radiation from a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser at laser power densities ranging from 0.55 GW cm 2 to 1.5 GW cm 2 has been studied. Time resolved spectral measurements of the plasma evolution show distinct fe...

Results of laser-induced breakdown experiments in fused silica (SiOJ employing 150 fs-7 ns, 780 mn laser pulses are reported. The avalanche ionization mechanism is found to dominate over the entire pulse-width range. Fluence breakdown threshold does not follow the scaling of F,6, when pulses are shorter than 10 ps. The impact ionization coefficient of SiO, is measured up to -3 X 10’ V/cm. The r...

The interaction of an intense laser pulse with large s,100 Åd clusters present in pulsed gas jets is shown to produce novel plasmas with electron temperatures far in excess of that predicted by abovethreshold ionization theory. The enhanced absorption of the laser light by the dense clusters results in the production of high ion charge states via collisional ionization resulting in strong x-ray...

An optical parametric oscillator and a Ti:sapphire laser are used as a pump source for the generation of high-order vibrational stimulated Raman emission in the vacuum ultraviolet region. This tunable laser is employed as an excitation/ionization source in a supersonic jet/multiphoton ionization/ time-of-flight mass spectrometric study of benzene. The merits and potential advantages of this app...

We studied the laser-molecule interaction dynamics that leads to the asymmetric D+ ion ejection in the dissociative ionization of D2 molecules observed recently in Kling et al. [Science 312, 246 (2006)10.1126/science.1126259]. By changing the carrier-envelope phase, we showed that the asymmetry is a consequence of manipulating the initial ionization and the rescattering of the electrons within ...

The formation of an electron–hole plasma during the interaction intense femtosecond laser pulses with transparent solids lies at heart processing. Advanced micro- and nanomachining applications require improved control over excitation characteristics. Here, we relate emission low-order harmonics to strong laser-field-induced formation. Together a measurement total density, identify contribution...