Dynamic acceleration effects in explosions of laser-irradiated heteronuclear clusters

Intense, femtosecond irradiation of atomic and molecular clusters can initiate Coulomb explosions, generating particle energies sufficient to drive nuclear fusion. Last and Jortner have proposed, based on particle dynamics simulations, that heteronuclear clusters with a mixture of heavy and light ions will not explode by the simple, equilibrium Coulomb model but that dynamic effects can lead to a boosting of energy of the lighter ejected ions Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 033401 (2001)]. We present experimental confirmation of this theoretically predicted ion energy enhancement in methane clusters.