Revealing the Mechanism of Heavy Ion Stopping at High Energies

Several fundamental aspects of heavy ion stopping in matter, which is important for many technological and medical applications, are not understood. This includes the charge dependence of ion stopping known as Barkas effect, the Bloch-contribution to the stopping cross-section, and charge exchange processes. In contrast to other studies, the use of crystalline materials with well-defined atom locations and the application of new sophisticated models will allow the separation of these related phenomena, so that they can be studied individually. This will reveal details of the physical mechanisms governing the energy dissipation by fast heavy ions in matter.