Acceleration of negative ions by Coulomb implosion mechanism.

Generation of high energy negative ions by laser-plasma interaction is studied theoretically and numerically. New acceleration process called Coulomb implosion mechanism is proposed, which explains efficient acceleration of negative ions from laser-plasmas. The model is confirmed by using 2-dimenstional Particle-in-Cell simulations. Experimental evidence of negative ion acceleration from cluster target is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]