Magnetic Field Stimulated Transitions of Excited States in Fast Muonic Helium Ions

It is shown that one can stimulate, by using the present-day laboratory magnetic fields, transitions between the $lm$ sub-levels of fast $\mu He^+$ ions formating in muon catalyzed fusion. Strong fields also cause the self-ionization from highly excited states of such muonic ions. Both effects are the consequence of the interaction of the bound muon with the oscillating field of the Stark term coupling the center-of-mass and muon motions of the $\mu He^+$ ion due to the non-separability of the collective and internal variables in this system. The performed calculations show a possibility to drive the population of the $lm$ sub-levels by applying a field of a few $Tesla$, which affects the reactivation rate and is especially important to the $K\alpha$ $x$-ray production in muon catalyzed fusion. It is also shown that the $2s-2p$ splitting in $\mu He^+$ due to the vacuum polarization slightly decreases the stimulated transition rates.Comment: 5 figure

Experimental and theoretical determination of the stopping power of ZrO2 films for protons and α-particles

We report the results of an experimental-theoretical study on the stopping power of ZrO2 films for swift H and He ion beams. The experiments, using the Rutherford Backscattering technique, were done for protons with incident energies in the range 200–1500 keV and for α-particle beams with energies in the range 160–3000 keV. The theoretical calculations were done in the framework of the dielectric formalism using the MELF-GOS model to account for the ZrO2 target electronic response. It is shown that for both ion beams, the agreement between theory and experiment is quite remarkable.This work has been financially supported by the Brazilian CNPq Agency (Contract 150757/2007). EDC acknowledges support from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina