Interaction of Heavy Ion Beams with Plasmas

Atomic radiative and collisional characteristics of ion beams with plasmas are required for solving many problems in spectroscopic and particle diagnostics of plasmas (e.g., HIBP method—Heavy-Ion Beam Probe [394], determination of the stopping power of ion beams in plasmas and optimal conditions for stripping of ion beams to obtain the maximum charge states and narrow charge-state distributions etc. As has been mentioned before, interactions of ion beams with plasma particles significantly differ from those with neutral particles in gaseous and solid targets. Moreover, the corresponding interaction cross sections strongly depend on plasma temperature, density, particle abundances and others. In this chapter, atomic processes of fast heavy ions with plasma particles are considered such as radiative and ternary recombinations, dielectronic recombination, ionization by electron impact and others. A Maxwellian distribution function of plasma particles depending on the incident-ion velocity (the so-called shifted velocity distribution) is discussed.