Channeling and Related Phenomena for GeV Particles

Abstract

Already in the original channeling paper by Lindhardl it was shown that the correlated scatterings of a projectile incident along a crystalline row of atoms can be studied by classical mechanics even when the individual scattering events are not amenable to a classical treatment. The condition for the classical model is that the projectile mass is large compared to the rest mass of the electron. Although this was very surprising it was even more surprising that many aspects of channeling for keV-MeV electrons/positrons could be understood from the same classical model. This was based on the fact that in the transverse motion it is the relativistic mass that enters. Later it was shown that axial effects are more classical than planar ones and that positrons are more classical than electrons.