The Spectra of the multicharged argon hollow ions; Observation, modeling and using for diagnostics of the early stage of the heating of clusters by a supper high contrast femtosecond laser pulses

Pikuz, T.; Faenov, A.*; Skobelev, I.*; Fortov, V. E.*; Boldarev, A.*; Gasilov, V.*; Chen, L. M.*; Zhang, L.*; Yan, W.*; Yuan, D.*; Mao, J.*; Whang, Z.*; Colgan, J.*; Abdallah, J. Jr.*; Fukuda, Yuji; Hayashi, Yukio; Pirozhkov, A. S.; Kawase, Keigo*; Shimomura, Takuya; Kiriyama, Hiromitsu; Kato, Yoshiaki* ; Bulanov, S. V.; Kando, Masaki

A study is made of the ultra-short laser pulse irradiation of Ar cluster targets. Experiments have been performed with large cluster sizes and using very high laser contrasts, which have allowed clear and unambiguous observation of exotic inner-shell transitions in near-neutral Ar ions. The interaction of the main laser pulse with the unperturbed target is a necessary requirement for observing these lines. Our measurements are supported by kinetics calculations in which a very detailed atomic model is used. X-ray spectral methods have been proposed to determine the parameters of the appearing plasma at the early stages of its evolution. It has been shown that the spectra of hollow ions are the most informative in the first moments of the heating of a cluster, whereas the diagnostics of the late stages can be performed using the conventional lines of multicharged ions.