Surface wake field model of beam-foil circular Rydberg states

Abstract

Production of projectile Rydberg states in fast ion-solid collisions in H-like ions exhibits a pronounce target thickness dependence in spite of these states forming at the last layers. This occurs due to important role of the surface wake field which varies with the target foil thickness. Further, according to the proposed model Rydberg states with low angular momentum are transformed into a circular Rydberg states while passing through the field. The transfer occurs by a single multiphoton process with high probability depending upon the projectile ion velocity with respect to the Fermi velocity of the target electrons.