Study on Coulomb explosions of ion mixtures

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates Coulomb explosions in spherical nanoplasmas with two ion species, analyzing energy spectra, shock shell formation, and conditions for producing narrow, quasi mono-energetic ion energy distributions.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous analysis and numerical verification of conditions leading to narrow, mono-energetic ion spectra in Coulomb explosions of ion mixtures.

Findings

Conditions for narrow energy spectra identified

Shock shell formation linked to energy spread

Numerical simulations confirm theoretical predictions

Abstract

The paper presents a theoretical work on the dynamics of Coulomb explosion for spherical nanoplasmas composed by two different ion species. Particular attention has been dedicated to study the energy spectra of the ions with the larger charge-to-mass ratio. The connection between the formation of shock shells and the energy spread of the ions has been the object of a detailed analysis, showing that under particular conditions the width of the asymptotic energy spectrum tends to become very narrow, which leads to a multi-valued ion phase-space. The conditions to generate a quasi mono-energetic ion spectrum have been rigorously demonstrated and verifed by numerical simulations, using a technique that, exploiting the spherical symmetry of the problem, allows one to obtain very accurate and precise results.