We report on time-resolved coherent diffraction imaging of gas-phase silver
nanoparticles, strongly heated via their plasmon resonance. The x-ray
diffraction images reveal a broad range of phenomena for different excitation
strengths, from simple melting over strong cavitation to explosive
disintegration. Molecular dynamics simulations fully reproduce this behavior
and show that the heating induces rather similar trajectories through the phase
diagram in all cases, with the very different outcomes being due only to
whether and where the stability limit of the metastable superheated liquid is
crossed.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures (including supplemental material