Abstract
Many wide band gap materials yield charged and neutral emissions when exposed to sub-band-gap laser radiation at power densities below the threshold for optical breakdown and plume formation. In this work, we report the observation of negative alkali ions from several alkali halides under comparable conditions. We observe no evidence for negative halogen ions, in spite of the high electron affinities of the halogens. Significantly, the positive and negative alkali ions show a high degree of spatial and temporal overlap. A detailed study of all the relevant particle emissions from potassium chloride (KCl) suggests that K− is formed by the sequential attachment of two electrons to K+.
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