Impurities good and bad: Doped cluster nanoplasmas in intense laser fields and characterization of impurity level

Abstract

Doping of cluster-based targets can bring out considerable modifications in the evolution of the nanoplasma formed from clusters in intense laser fields. The consequence could be either an increase or, a decrease (depending upon the properties and proportion of the dopant) in the emission of the resulting charge particles or photons from nanoplasma. As we can control the percentage of CS2 in the doped Ar-CS2 cluster, we can have argon-doped CS2 cluster (when argon constitutes about 10–40%) and CS2-doped argon cluster (when fraction of CS2 is 10–40%). In the experimental studies of electron spectra and X-ray emission from pristine Arn (n ≤ 25, 000) and doped Ar-CS2 clusters at laser intensities of about 1015 W cm−2, it is observed that there is more than an order of magnitude enhancement in those emissions in doped Ar-CS2 clusters than in the former case. Conversely, a significant reduction in those emissions was found in the latter case. Such observations signify the importance of characterization of these targets. In this direction, we demonstrate a simple method for the characterization of doping level based on the Rayleigh scattering measurements.