Search for highly charged particles in cosmic rays

The recently obtained results on e⁺e^? → hadrons and multigamma production in pp collisions provide some support for a previously made argument that heavy, highly charged subnucleons may exist, and a search for such particles in cosmic rays has been made. In 620 hours no candidates were detected, and an upper limit for the unaccompanied particle flux of 7 · 10^?10 cm^?2 sec^?1 sr^?1 at sea level under 600 g/cm² concrete is obtained with 90% confidence.     

Retention of the potential energy of multiply charged argon ions incident on copper

The retained fraction of the potential energy of argon ions incident on copper has been measured using stationary calorimetry at charge states up to 9+ and kinetic energies ranging from 75 to 240 eV per ionic charge. An average fraction of 30% to 40% is found with little dependence on the charge number and on the kinetic energy. The retention of the total energy ranges from 60% to 75% and can mainly be accounted for by the retained fraction of the potential energy and the collisional energy lost by reflected ions and sputtered target atoms.     

Production of multiply charged xenon ions

A multiply charged ion source based on E.C.R. heating is described and abundances for xenon ions up to Xe¹³⁺ are given.     

Quantum electrodynamic theory of multiply charged ions

A Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory is constructed within quantum electrodynamics so as to calculate energy levels nad transition probabilities in multiply charged ions. The basic features of the suggested model are renormalization and its relative simplicity. Renormalization is guaranteed by the fact that all interesting quantities (energy levels, transition probabilities, and cross sections of various processes) are expressed in terms of many-electron Green's functions, whose renormalization is achieved by standard methods. To demonstrate the simplicity of the suggested method, expressions are obtained for corrections to the ground state energy of a two-electron multiply charged ion due to two-photon exchange diagrams, whose derivation by other methods is, in our opinion, quite more complicated.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 8, pp. 43–54, August, 1990.     

Effective stopping of relativistic,multiply charged ions

Energy losses in collisions between heavy, multiply charged ions and light atoms are considered for ion charges Z » 1 and relative collision velocities v » 1, such that Zvc, where c is the speed of light (atomic units), as well as polarization losses in the motion of heavy relativistic ions in matter. The Born approximation is inapplicable, strictly speaking, in this range of the parameters. Simple equations are obtained for the effective stopping. A comparison is made with experiment and with the calculations of other authors.Scientific Research Institute of Applied Physics, Tashkent State University. Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 10, pp. 115–119, October, 1995.     

Neutralization of multiply charged ions at a surface

We report on emission processes induced by particle-solid interaction involving ions with a large potential (i.e., high ion charge state) and low kinetic energy. After an introduction into existing neutralization models for ion scattering at a metal surface a detailed discussion on the electron emission processes is presented.The number of electrons emitted per incident ion is shown to be proportional to the potential energy only within a restricted parameter field involving charge state and ion velocity. The kinetic energy distribution of emitted electrons is dominated by low-energetic electrons (30 eV), while inner shell holes of the projectile ion can initiate high-energetic characteristic Auger electrons. The presence of inner shell holes is also of importance for the charge state of highly charged ions being scattered at surfaces whereas normally the charge state distribution of scattered ions depends on the impact parameter only.The influence of the primary ion charge state on the sputtering yield of insulating surfaces is seen for the charge state of sputtered particles, whereas the total sputtering yield seems to be insensitive. This question is still subject to controversy, however.Photon emission dependent on the charge state of the impinging ion has been observed up to now only for extremely highly charged ions as hydrogenlike Ar or Kr.     

Short-pulse ECR: A source of multiply charged ions

Extensive investigation is now under way in CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in the framework of the Beta Beam project with the aim of gaining insight into neutrino oscillations. It is suggested that the decay of ⁶He nuclei produce neutrino beams accelerated to an energy on the order of 100 GeV/nucleon. To this end, it is necessary to generate short-pulse (30–100 μs) beams of multiply charged ions of this isotope. Conventional ECR-based ion sources seem to be inappropriate for this purpose, since the plasma density grows slowly (for more than a millisecond) in this case compared with the desired pulse duration. A design concept of a short-pulse ECR-based source of multiply charged ions is proposed. In experiments with pumping at frequencies of 37.5 and 75.0 GHz, pulses as short as ∼50 μs were obtained. Good agreement between theory and experiments is demonstrated.     

Recent observations of anomalous cosmic rays made with solid track detectors

A few exposures of CN-85 detectors on Earth-orbiting satellites in the period 1993–1994 show evidence for the reappearance of the radiation belt from geomagnetically trapped anomalous cosmic ray ions.     

Three-electron auger process from beam-foil excited multiply charged ions

Electron emission from collisions of C3+ ions (22.7 A MeV) with carbon foils (21, 49 and 90 microg/cm(2)) was studied by the time-of-flight method. Two prominent emission patterns can be readily identified as "binary encounter" electrons and "cusp" electrons. With the thinnest target only, a third structure is visible at slightly lower time-of-flight (thus slightly higher energy) than the cusp electrons. The energy of these electrons would correspond to 647(+116)/(-104) eV if they were emitted from the projectile frame of reference. A possible explanation is a rare three-electron-Auger K(2)L(2)L(1) process.