title: Coulomb explosion and thermal spikes.
abstract: A fast ion can electronically excite a solid producing a track of damage, a process initially used to detect energetic particles but now used to alter materials. From the seminal paper by Fleischer et al. [Phys. Rev. 156, 353 (1967)] to the present, "Coulomb explosion" and thermal spike models have been often treated as competing models for describing ion track effects. Here molecular dynamics simulations of electronic sputtering, a surface manifestation of track formation, show that in the absence of significant quenching Coulomb explosion in fact produces a spike at high excitation density, but the standard spike models are incorrect.
authors.affiliation: Engineering Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903, USA. ebringa@llnl.gov
authors.forename: E M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Bringa
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Johnson