Theoretical studies on multiple ionisation and electron capture processes in heavy ion induced M-shell ionisation

TL;DR

This paper develops theoretical methods to better understand multiple ionisation and electron capture mechanisms in heavy ion collisions affecting M-shell x-ray emissions, bridging gaps between theory and experiment.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized theoretical approach to study M-shell ionisation and electron capture, improving agreement with experimental data.

Findings

Capture contribution exceeds multiple ionisation effects.

Combined mechanisms align well with experimental measurements.

Theoretical techniques effectively explain complex M-shell processes.

Abstract

Multiple ionisation and electron capture are found to be vital mechanisms for K and L x-ray emissions along with the direct coulomb ionisation in heavy ion-atom collisions. Naturally, these two mechanisms may also be significant for M x-ray emissions also. However, these mechanisms associating with the M-shell are highly complex and not yet studied convincingly. We, in this work, have discussed about theoretical techniques to study these mechanisms in more general way, which in turn, almost resolved the wide gap between the theories and experiments regarding M-shell prevalent in literature up to a good extent. We have justified this technique with a few representative cases; for example, the silicon and sulphur projectile ions colliding with the gold and bismuth targets at beam energies ranging from 5 to 10 MeV. Here, we see that the capture contribution is much higher than that coming from the multiple ionisation effect. The combined effects of direct coulomb ionisation associated with simultaneous multiple ionisation and electron capture give a better agreement with the measurements up to a good extent.