Heinrich F. Beyer - Böcker

Emphasizing a physical understanding with many illustrations, Introduction to the Physics of Highly Charged Ions covers the major areas of x-ray radiation and elementary atomic processes occurring with highly charged ions in hot laboratory and astrophysical plasmas. Topics include light and ion sources, spectroscopy, atomic structure, magnetic and QED effects, and a thorough look at atomic collisions, from elementary processes in plasmas to ion-surface interaction and hollow atoms. Avoiding unnecessary mathematical details, this book is accessible to a broad range of readers, including graduate students and researchers.

X-Ray Radiation of Highly Charged Ions is a comprehensive collection of atomic characteristics of highly charged ion (HCI) sources and elementary processes related to X-ray radiation: energy levels, wavelengths, transition probabilities, cross sections, and rate coefficients. The material covers a broad range of elementary processes occuring in hot laboratory and astrophysical plasmas: radiative and dielectronic recombination, radiative electron capture, radiation transfer and excitation, and others. The book comprises a large amount of figures, tables, simple formulas, and if possible scaling laws for radiative and collisional characteristics of HCI. The data presented is useful for specialists who deal with X-ray spectroscopy, physics of HCI, heavy-particle collisions, and thermonuclear fusion.

The book guides the reader to the research frontiers in atomic physics with heavy ions, giving a concise image of the advanced experimental and theoretical methods exemplified by the most recent results. It ranges from accelerator and ion trap technology, over the important and fundamental details in the understanding of strongly bound far-electron systems, to radiative and collisional phenomena of these objects. The subfields have been carefully selected; each is covered by leading experts who draw a lively picture of their research.

The physics of highly charged ions continues to be one of the most active and interesting fields of atomic physics. A large fraction of the characteristic radiation of such ions lies in the x-ray region and its spectroscopy represents an important experimental tool. The field of x-ray spectroscopy grew directly from the discovery of x radiation by Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen in 1895. The early contributions to atomic physics that arose out of x-ray spectroscopy are well documented and are the subject of many centennial events. In the past, the gross features of most x-ray spectra in the hard x-ray region have been accounted for on a hydrogenic model. In many instances the gross spectral features recorded in the early days of x-ray physics match those observed with state-of-the-art techniques today and many of the early qualitative - terpretations have remained unchanged. It is in the details of the spectra that today's results are superior to those obtained many years ago, and it is in the quantitative and accurate - scriptions that today's predictions are better. A rejuvenation of the field has occurred after the great achievements in the development of new ion sources for production of heavy ions with only one or few electrons. The new tools available to the experimenter allow the exploration of new states of m- ter and allow us to challenge new frontiers in our theoretical understanding of atoms and their interactions with other particles.

This book is devoted to one of the most active domains of atomic physic- atomic physics of heavy positive ions. During the last 30 years, this terrain has attracted enormous attention from both experimentalists and theoreti­ cians. On the one hand, this interest is stimulated by rapid progress in the development of laboratory ion sources, storage rings, ion traps and methods for ion cooling. In many laboratories, a considerable number of complex and accurate experiments have been initiated, challenging new frontiers. Highly charged ions are used for investigations related to fundamental research and to more applied fields such as controlled nuclear fusion driven by heavy ions and its diagnostics, ion-surface interaction, physics of hollow atoms, x-ray lasers, x-ray spectroscopy, spectrometry of ions in storage rings and ion traps, biology, and medical therapy. On the other hand, the new technologies have stimulated elaborate theo­ retical investigations, especially in developing QED theory, relativistic many­ body techniques, plasma-kinetic modeling based on the Coulomb interactions of highly charged ions with photons and various atomic particles - electrons, atoms, molecules and ions. The idea of assembling this book matured while the editors were writ­ ing another book, X-Ray Radiation of Highly Charged Ions by H. F. Beyer, H. -J. Kluge and V. P. Shevelko (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 1997) covering a broad range of x-ray and other radiative phenomena central to atomic physics with heavy ions.