Double charge exchange at high impact energies

Abstract

In fast ion-atom collisions, double ionization always dominates the two-electron transfer. For this reason, an adequate description of double charge exchange requires proper inclusion of intermediate ionization channels. This is even more important in two- than in one-electron transitions. First-order Born-type perturbation theories ignore throughout these electronic continuum intermediate states and hence provide utterly unreliable high energy cross sections for two-electron capture processes. Therefore, it is essential to use second- and higher-order theories, which include the intermediate ionization continua of the two electrons in an approximate manner. In the present paper, a new second-order theory called the Born distorted wave (BDW) approximation is introduced and implemented in the case of symmetric resonant double electron capture from the ground state of helium by fast alpha particles. A genuine four-body formalism is adopted, in contrast to the conventional independent particle model of atomic scattering theory. The obtained results for the total cross sections are compared with the available experimental data, and satisfactory agreement is recorded. As the incident energy increases, a dramatic improvement is obtained in going from the CB1 to the BDW approximation, since the latter closely follows the measurement, whereas the former overestimates the observed total cross sections by two orders of magnitude. This strongly indicates that the role of continuum intermediate states is decisive, even at those incident energies for which the Thomas double scattering effects are not important. This is in sharp contrast to the case of one-electron transfer atomic reactions.