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 femtosecond laser heating of metals. The conduction electrons of the metal are directly heated to very high temperature by the impinging ion and then 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 and lattice temperatures. The results from three-dimensional numerical solutions of these equations are presented.