Explosion of C/sub 60/ irradiated with a high-intensity femtosecond laser pulse

Summary form only given. We have studied the ions generated by the interaction of neutral C/sub 60/ molecules with high-intensity femtosecond laser pulses using an ion time-of-flight spectrometer. The ion fragment distributions were examined over a range of focused intensities using both the fundamental and second-harmonic laser wavelengths of a Ti:sapphire system. The results show a highly anisotropic explosion that could not be reproduced by a simple Coulomb explosion model. We observed charge states up to C/sup 4+/ with kinetic energies up to /spl sim/1 keV. This was confirmed by switching of the extraction field to contain kinetic energy spectra directly at the expense of the ability to resolve charge states.