Extreme sensitivity of differential momentum transfer cross sections to target atom initial conditions

Doubly and Triply Differential Cross Sections for Single Ionization of He by Fast Au53+ Using a Multi-Body Quasiclassical Model

A multi-body multi-center quasiclassical model was used to determine doubly- and triply-differential cross sections following single ionization in 3.6 MeV/amu Au53+ + He collisions. The present model improved recent calculations, in which free electrons were added in the collision to reproduce, at least qualitatively, the experimental binary peak. In the present calculations, the electrons, that were assumed to originate from the collisions of Au53+ with surfaces before colliding with the He target, were now considered to be in the field of the projectile, with nearly the same velocity. The agreement between the calculations and the experiment was improved, for both the doubly- and the triply-differential cross sections and was better than previous calculations based on quantum mechanics.

Agreement of Experiment and Theory on the Single Ionization of Helium by Fast Proton Impact

Even though the study of ion-atom collisions is a mature field of atomic physics, large discrepancies between experiment and theoretical calculations are still common. Here we present experimental results with high momentum resolution on the single ionization of helium induced by 1-MeV protons, and we compare these to theoretical calculations. The overall agreement is strikingly good, and even the first Born approximation yields good agreement between theory and experiment. This has been expected for several decades, but so far has not been accomplished. The influence of projectile coherence effects on the measured data is briefly discussed in terms of an ongoing dispute on the existence of nodal structures in the electron angular emission distributions.

Role of projectile coherence in close heavy ion-atom collisions

We have measured fully differential cross sections for single ionization and transfer ionization (TI) in 16 MeV O(7+)+He collisions. The impact parameters mostly contributing to single ionization are about an order of magnitude larger than for TI. Therefore, the projectile beam was much more coherent for the latter compared to the former process. The measured data suggest that, as a result, TI is significantly affected by interference effects which are not present in single ionization.

Doubly inelastic collisions with relativistic heavy ions and target recoil momentum spectroscopy

We consider relativistic collisions of heavy hydrogenlike ions with hydrogen and helium atoms in which the ion-atom interaction causes both colliding particles to change their internal states. Concentrating on the study of the longitudinal momentum spectrum of the atomic recoil ions, we discuss the role of relativistic and higher order effects, predict a surprisingly strong influence of the projectile's electron on the momentum transfer, and show that the important information about the doubly inelastic collisions could be obtained in experiment merely by measuring the recoil momentum spectrum.