Abstract: Multicharged xenon ions with charge upto 11 have been observed in laser ionization of xenon beam by a 25 ns Nd-YAG 532 nm laser at laser intensity about 1011 W•cm－2.Experiment results indicated that the multicharged ions appeared only when the laser interacted with the middle part of the pulsed beam, and its intensities increase with increase the backing pressure of Xe source gas, indicates that the clusters in the beam is essential to the production of multicharged ions. From the experimental results, we think that the cluster is ionized via multiphoton ionization and form a nanoplasma ball, which can absorb the laser resonantly to further ionize the single charge ion to high charge state.

Key words: Xenon, Nanosecond laser, Multicharged ions, Time-of-flight mass spectrometry