Laser disintegration of Van der Waals clusters of carbon-containing molecules

We report the production of highly charged ions, C⁵⁺ and O⁶⁺, obtained by Coulomb explosion of propane and, respectively, carbon dioxide clusters, exposed to laser pulses of (1–6)×10¹⁴ W/cm² intensity. At such intensities, only triply charged ions were created via tunneling ionization of isolated molecules. Carbon ions with energies of 1.2 keV and oxygen ions with energies of 2 keV have been detected. Some information about the explosion dynamics could be extracted from numerical simulations.