Energy loss and angular distributions of gold cluster constituents

Heavy gold cluster beams are accelerated to high energy (hundreds of keV/atom) and break up when going through a thin foil. The energy and angular distributions of the constituents are then measured and very well reproduced by a SRIM code calculation, which takes into account atomic interactions only. These distributions do not depend on the number of constituents in the cluster and are found to be the same as those of single gold atoms at the same velocity, in the studied energy range.