Coulomb Explosion and Energy Loss of Energetic C₂₀ Clusters in Dense Plasmas

The molecular dynamics (MD) method is used to simulate the interactions of energetic C₂₀ clusters with the dense plasma targets within the framework of the linear Vlasov-Poisson theory. The influences of various clusters (H₂, N₂, C₂₀ and C₆₀ respectively) on stopping power are discussed. The simulation results show that the vicinage effects in the Coulomb explosion dynamics and the stopping power are strongly affected by the variations in the cluster speed and the plasma parameters. Coulomb explosions are found to proceed faster for higher speeds, lower plasma densities and higher electron temperatures. In addition, the cluster stopping power is strongly enhanced in the early stages of Coulomb explosions due to the vicinage effect, but this enhancement eventually diminishes, after the cluster constituent ions are sufficiently separated. For the large and heavy clusters, the stopping power ratio reaches much higher values in the early stage of Coulomb explosion owing to the constructive interferences in the vicinage effect.