Effects of tampering on rare-gas core-shell clusters irradiated by resonantly tuned soft-x-ray pulses

Abstract

Tampering resonant rare-gas clusters with nonresonant atoms has been shown to significantly decrease in the final ionization of the resonant atoms [J. Phys. B: At., Mol. Opt. Phys. 41, 181001 (2008)], but not their transient ionization [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 183401 (2014)]. In this paper, we explain the details of the charge transfer mechanism from the resonant to nonresonant atoms. We have applied our model to the interaction of an ultraintense x-ray laser tuned to the center of xenon's giant 4d resonance with core-shell argon-xenon clusters. Our results are in agreement with previous experimental results of the disintegration products, and the transient states. Also, our model predicts that the resonant xenon is quickly ionized by the laser. The freed electrons then collisionally ionized the outer argon atoms before recombining with the inner xenon ions to reduce their final charge state. We find that unlike homogeneous clusters whose behavior is governed by the number of atoms, the behavior of core-shell heterogeneous clusters is well predicted by the ratio of resonant to nonresonant atoms.