HITRAP Facility and Experiments - Status and Future Perspectives

Slow single charged ions interacting with solid surfaces dissipate their kinetic energy mainly by nuclear collisions which results in, e.g. defect creation and erosion of material from the surface. Highly charged ions (HCI) are missing a few or even all of their electrons, and therefore carry additional potential energy, which is defined as the sum of the binding energies of all the electrons...

Investigations of the interaction of highly charged ions (HCI) with solid surfaces started back almost 20 years ago at the HZDR Ion Beam Center (IBC). In particular, first experiments focused on the determination of channels for potential energy dissipation in solids [1].

Successively, systematic studies on HCI induced modifications of surface topography on the nm scale were conducted...

Charge exchange (CX), the atomic process in which a bound electron from a neutral atom or molecule is tranferred into a highly excited state of a highly charged ion (HCI), results in the emission of a complex characteristic x-ray spectrum. Relative line intensities in this spectrum depend on the donor and acceptor species, as well as their relative velocity.

CX contributes to spectra of...

GSI has an active program of laser spectroscopy experiments with highly charged heavy ions. The focus of the measurements is on the study of fundamental interactions in extreme electric and magnetic fields, like they are available in few electron configurations of these heavy ions. The applied experimental methods comprise on the one hand laser spectroscopy of relativistic ions in storage...

With its roots in collision physics, back in the late 1980, COLTRIMS-setups (COLd Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy) or Reaction microscopes, as they are also termed, are widely used in modern AMO-physics. Technically they consist of a super sonic gas jet, the imaging spectrometer and position and time-sensitive detectors. The super sonic gas jet provides the target, covering basically...