Compilation, measurements and tabulation of heavy ion stopping data

Abstract

In 1978 and 1980, two series of measurements, performed with 3–6 MeV/u heavy ions, indicated without ambiguity that the commonly used stopping power tabulations failed in reproducing the data. After analysis, this was attributed to the fact that the effective charge parametrization, which is the basis of such tabulations, was oversimplified. A new tabulation of stopping powers and ranges of heavy ions in solids, covering the energy range from 2.5 to 100 MeV/u was proposed in 1980. The basis of this tabulation was a Q 1 2 scaling of the stopping powers relative to those of 4He at the same velocity in the same media, the effective charge parameter being adjusted according to experimental data. From 1983 to 1990, a new series of measurements performed with 20–100 MeV/u heavy ions at GANIL revealed some defects in this parametrization when the ions tend to be fully stripped. These defects were corrected for in a new tabulation (1990) based on a set of 600 stopping power measurements, and covering the energy range from 2.5 to 500 MeV/u. In 1982, at Darmstadt, a systematic difference was observed between the stopping powers of very heavy ions in gases and in solids. It was therefore impossible to apply to gases the effective charge parametrization valid for solids. This gas-solid effect was confirmed by an extensive experimental study, carried out at Orsay in the energy range 2–13 MeV/u (1985), and its vanishing at high energy was observed at GANIL in a recent series of experiments (1988–1990).