Degree of the Neutralization of Highly Charged Ar Ions Scattered at Different Angles from a Au Surface

We investigated the influence of the scattering geometry and incident energy on the neutralization degree of highly charged Arq+ (q = 7–13) ions scattered from single Au crystal. It is found that at large scattering angle the probability of detecting multiple charged ions after interaction is high. We point out that besides the interaction time, additional ionization in hard collisions is also important. The results are supported by model calculations which consider electron exchange processes along the ion trajectory.