Energy losses of slow ions traveling through crystalline solids and scattered on crystalline surfaces

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis progress report focuses on recent work on energy losses undergone by keV slow ions through crystals and on solid surfaces. We treat cases where strong corrugations of the electron density along ion trajectories occur and where an averaged electron density along the ion track cannot be assumed. We present experiments which reveal the existence of a threshold effect in stopping on d-electron metals and discuss experiments on scattering on surfaces where ion trajectories pass through regions with exponentially decreasing electron densities. The modeling realistically describes the inhomogeneous electron density in and above a crystal, especially in directions with high symmetry. We strive to highlight the most important features in these cases.