Abstract
•We treat theoretically highly charged ions-small argon clusters collisions.•Coulomb interaction between argon ions of the cluster plays an important role.•The cluster remains intact during the collision time.•The average charge per atom decreases with increasing cluster size.
We have studied the fragmentation of small argon clusters in slow collisions with highly charged projectiles. The studied systems are Xeq+–ArN (N=3, 5, 7, 10) for two impact velocities; v=0.3a.u. (for q=25) and v=0.14a.u. (for q=5) which correspond to the impact energies 300keV and 65keV respectively. The theoretical method is based on the Classical Molecular Dynamics (CMD) which includes the Over-Barrier (OB) and tunneling (TU) mechanisms.