Evaporation of an anisotropic nanoplasma

¹ Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
² Department of Chemistry, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
³ Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
⁵ Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue B109, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
⁶ Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
⁷ Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics, Technical University of Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany
⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA

^* Corresponding authors: cbostedt@anl.gov, vilesov@usc.edu, ogessner@lbl.gov

Published online: 16 April 2019

Abstract

Intense laser induced plasma dynamics in sub-micron scale helium droplets are monitored by femtosecond time-resolved X-ray coherent diffractive imaging. Anisotropic surface softening and strongly anisotropic shrinking of the plasma core are observed.