The emission of neutral and charged atoms and clusters from a polycrystalline indium surface under bombardment with 5 and 10 keVAu, Au-2, Au-3 and Au-5 projectiles was investigated. Single photon laser postionization was utilized for the detection of sputtered neutral particles. Secondary ions were detected without the laser under otherwise exactly the same experimental conditions. The relative cluster yields were found to be enhanced under polyatomic projectile bombardment, more so the larger the number of atoms in the sputtered cluster. The ionization probability strongly increases with increasing cluster size, but is essentially independent of the projectile impact energy. At a fixed impact energy, the ionization probability of sputtered monomers was found to decrease with increasing number of constituent gold atoms per projectile, but there was no detectable effect for sputtered dimers and larger clusters. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.