Trajectory-dependent electronic excitations of keV ions

We present experiments directly demonstrating the significance of charge-exchange events for the energy deposition of ions with velocities below the Bohr velocity. The observed effects lead to a drastic trajectory-dependence of the specific energy loss.
Experiments were performed with the time-of-flight medium energy ion scattering set-up at Uppsala University [1]. We employed pulsed beams of singly charged ions with masses ranging from 1 (H+) to 40 u (Ar+) and energies between 20 and 350 keV. Ions were transmitted through self-supporting Si(100) nanomembranes and detected behind the sample. We assessed the energy and angular distributions of deflected particles for different alignments of the initial beam direction with the crystal axes and planes. A set-up for measuring the exit charge state was constructed to support the analysis [2].
For all ions we observe lower electronic stopping for channelled trajectories as compared to random ones as shown in Fig. 1 [3]. For protons, this difference is explained by increasing contributions of core-electron excitations more likely to happen at small impact parameters accessible only in random geometry. For heavier ions, core-electron excitations at employed ion velocities are inefficient and we, therefore, explain these results by reionisation events occurring in close collisions of ions with target atoms [4]. These events in turn result in trajectory-dependent mean charge states, which heavily affects the energy loss, and could be confirmed by first qualitative measurements of the trajectory dependence of exit charge states. The simplicity of our experimental geometry leads to results that can serve as excellent benchmark systems for calculations using time-dependent density functional theory.

References
[1] M. A. Sortica et al., Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. B, 463 (2020) 16-20.
[2] R. Holeňák et al., Vacuum, 185 (2021) 109988.
[3] S. Lohmann et al., Phys. Rev. A, 102 (2020) 062803.
[4] S. Lohmann and D. Primetzhofer, Phys. Rev. Lett., 124 (2020) 096601.