Fragmentation dynamics of fullerenes in intense femtosecond-laser fields: loss of small neutral fragments on a picosecond time scale.

The fragmentation dynamics of C60 irradiated with intense femtosecond laser pulses is studied with one-color pump-probe spectroscopy. Small neutral fragments (C, C2, and C3) are formed by an 800-nm pump pulse which are then postionized by a delayed probe pulse. The respective ion signals detected by the time-of-flight mass spectrometry dramatically increase on a time scale of 10-20 ps.