THE PHYSICS OF ION IMPACT CATHODE HEATING

The heating of a metal surface by ion impact is described by a coupled electron and phonon model that follows from recent research on femtos econd laser heating of metals. The conduction electrons of the metal a re directly heated to very high temperature by the impinging ion and t hen on a longer time scale transfer their energy to the lattice. This results in very efficient heating of the lattice. These processes are described by coupled partial differential equations for the electron a nd lattice temperatures. The results from three-dimensional numerical solutions of these equations are presented.