Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy: A Complementary Technique to (e,2e) and (e,3e)

Abstract

The recently developed technique of recoil-ion momentum spectroscopy (RIMS) has shown its ability to be a powerful tool for the investigation of ionisation processes induced by the impact of fast ions. We show results for the ionisation dynamics in the collision system 3 MeV protons on helium using this technique and demonstrate the relevance for similar (e,2e)-investigations. Since our method is also suitable for electron-helium collisions we performed first experiments on the electron impact ionisation of He with our RIMSpectrometer. We present preliminary results obtained with a newly developed pulsed electron gun. A new-type RIMSpectrometer is described that enables the determination of highly differential cross sections of electron impact ionisation using a multicoincidence technique with large solid angle position sensitive detectors. The perspectives of future experiments with the new experimental developments are discussed.