EVIDENCE OF ATOMIC INNER-SHELL EXCITATION IN XENON FROM ELECTRON SPECTRA PRODUCED BY COLLISION-FREE MULTIPHOTON PROCESSES AT 193 NM.

Summary form only given. The authors report on experiments which investigated the energy spectrum of electrons generated by collision-free multiphoton ionization of xenon, krypton, and argon irradiated with intense (10**1 **3- 10**1 **5 W/cm**2 ) picosecond 193-nm radiation. The instrument built for determination of the electron energies was a magnetic mirror time-of-flight electron spectrometer that has an acceptance angle of 2 pi and an energy resolution of greater than 40 meV. It is concluded that multiquantum processes in the UV appear capable of producing inner-shell vacancies by an intra-atomic process. For these studies of xenon, the strongest Auger lines observed in this work correspond to N//4 //5 O//1 O//1 transitions which terminate in the 4d**1 **0 5s**0 5p**6 state.