Competition between fission and intra-cluster fusion in highly excited fullerene clusters

The occurrence of intra-cluster fusion of fullerene molecules inside van der Waals bound fullerene clusters can be observed following femtosecond laser excitation. We show that the fusion reaction competes with the fission of multiply charged clusters. Energetic barriers to the reaction of at least 85 eV have to be overcome, similar to the energetic barriers to molecular fusion observed in fullerene ion-neutral fullerene collision experiments.