A fast ion penetrating a solid creates a track of excitations. This can produce displacements seen as an etched track, a process initially used to detect energetic particles but now used to alter materials. From the seminal papers by Fleischer et al. [Phys. Rev. 156, 353 (1967)] to the present [C. Trautmann, S. Klaumunzer and H. Trinkaus, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3648 (2000)], 'Coulomb explosion' and thermal spike models are treated as conflicting models for describing ion track effects. Here

more »

... lar dynamics simulations of electronic-sputtering, a surface manifestation of ion track formation, show that 'Coulomb explosion' produces a 'heat' spike so that these are early and late aspects of the same process. Therefore, differences in scaling are due to the use of incomplete spike models.