The influence of various excitation mechanisms (lasers, collision with
highly charged ions) on the electronic and ionic dynamics of metal
clusters is investigated. The tools are TDLDA calculations with
simultanous dynamics of the ionic cores. In selected cases, effects
beyond TDLDA are included. The results are analyzed in terms of
several global observables (number of emitted electrons, energy
balance, dipole signal) and of a few detailed ones (distribution of
kinetic energies, angular distribution, ionization probabilities).
It is found that ionic collision perform very similar to femtosecond
lasers with respect to most global observables. The detailed
distributions, however, do depende more sensitively on the excitation
mechanism and its parameters.