The interactions of high-energy, highly charged Xe ions with fullerenes

In 1985, Robert Curl and Richard Smalleyl discovered a new form of carbon, the fullerene, C60, which consists of 60 carbon atoms in a closed cage resembling a soccer ball. In 1990, Kratschmer et al. were able to make macroscopic quantities of fullerenes2. This has generated intense activity to study the properties of fullerenes. One area of research involves collisions between fullerenes and atoms, ions or electrons3,4. In this paper we describe experiments involving interactions between fullerenes and highly charged ions in which the center-of-mass energies exceed those used in other work by several orders of magnitude. The high values of projectile velocity and charge state result in excitation and decay processes differing significantly from those seen in studies at. lower energies3. Our results are discussed in terms of theoretical models analogous to those used in nuclear physics and this provides an interesting demonstration of the unity of physics.