U.S. Germany Cooperative Research: Three-Dimensional Imaging of Ionizing Collisions

Missouri University Of Science And Technology, Rolla MO

Investigators

Abstract

0224943 Schulz This award supports Michael Schulz, Don Madison and students from the University of Missouri, Rolla in a collaboration with Joachim Ulrich in the Department of Quantum Dynamics at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. The collaboration will investigate single and double ionization of helium by ion impact. The U.S. group recently obtained for the first time complete three-dimensional images of the electron emission pattern in single ionization with the kinematics of all collision products fixed. It was found that even state-of-the-art theories, which have been successful in describing the ionization process under restricted geometries, do not reproduce the measured three-dimensional images very well. The present collaboration will develop new theoretical approaches designed to identify the important physical effects. The German group is world renowned in the experimental techniques necessary to this collaboration. The combination of experimental and theoretical expertise will lead to new and fundamentally important insight into the collision dynamics under study.