Collisions of proton or highly charged ion–atom in a strong magnetic field and dense quantum plasmas

Abstract

Magneto inertial fusion driven by heavy ions beam (HIB) is a very attractive potential approach for the nuclear energy system. One of the key issues is to investigate the interaction process of the HIB-target considering the condition of plasma screening and strong magnetic field background. In this paper, the influence of the external magnetic field and the plasma screening was investigated by simplifying the process of beam bombarding into a two-body collision between the energetic ions and target atoms. The classical-trajectory Monte Carlo method was accommodated by modifying the Hamiltonian in the collision system, where the effects of plasma screening and the account for the strong magnetic field background were considered. The total cross sections of single electron ionization and charge transfer of the projectile (H+, He2+, Xe32+, Bi31+, U34+)–atom (H, He) collisions are computed. The results indicated that the magnetic field effect becomes more obvious in the low energy regime of the projectiles. With the increase in energy, the change of total cross sections and angular differential cross sections gradually disappears. In the dense quantum plasmas, plasma screening presents very different effects for protons and heavy ion projectiles. This work may pave the way for extending the study to other collision systems calculations.