No Arabic abstract
We present a fully {it ab initio}, non-perturbative, time-dependent approach to describe single and double ionization of helium by proton and antiproton impact. A flexible and accurate finite-element discrete-variable-representation is applied to discretize the problem on the radial grid in spherical coordinates. Good agreement with the most recent experimental data for absolute angle-integrated cross sections is obtained over a wide range of incident projectile energies between 3 keV and 6 MeV. Furthermore, angle-differential cross sections for two-electron ejection are predicted for a proton impact energy of 6 MeV. Finally, the time evaluation of the ionization process is portrayed by displaying the electron density as a function of the projectile location.
Recent exciting progress in the preparation and manipulation of the motional quantum states of a single trapped proton enabled the first direct detection of the particles spin state. Based on this success the proton magnetic moment $mu_p$ was measured with ppm precision in a Penning trap with a superimposed magnetic field inhomogeneity. An improvement by an additional factor of 1000 in precision is possible by application of the so-called double Penning trap technique. In a recent paper we reported the first demonstration of this method with a single trapped proton, which is a major step towards the first direct high-precision measurement of $mu_p$. The techniques required for the proton can be directly applied to measure the antiproton magnetic moment $mu_{bar{p}}$. An improvement in precision of $mu_{bar{p}}$ by more than three orders of magnitude becomes possible, which will provide one of the most sensitive tests of CPT invariance. To achieve this research goal we are currently setting up the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) at the antiproton decelerator (AD) of CERN.
Helium atom is the simplest many-body electronic system provided by nature. The exact solution to the Schrodinger equation is known for helium ground and excited states, and represents a workbench for any many-body methodology. Here, we check the ab initio many-body GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) against the exact solution for helium. Starting from Hartree-Fock, we show that GW and BSE yield impressively accurate results on excitation energies and oscillator strength, systematically improving time-dependent Hartree-Fock. These findings suggest that the accuracy of BSE and GW approximations is not significantly limited by self-interaction and self-screening problems even in this few electron limit. We further discuss our results in comparison to those obtained by time-dependent density-functional theory.
A theoretical and experimental study of the fragmentation of closed thin shells made of a disordered brittle material is presented. Experiments were performed on brown and white hen egg-shells under two different loading conditions: fragmentation due to an impact with a hard wall and explosion by a combustion mixture giving rise to power law fragment size distributions. For the theoretical investigations a three-dimensional discrete element model of shells is constructed. Molecular dynamics simulations of the two loading cases resulted in power law fragment mass distributions in satisfactory agreement with experiments. Based on large scale simulations we give evidence that power law distributions arise due to an underlying phase transition which proved to be abrupt and continuous for explosion and impact, respectively. Our results demonstrate that the fragmentation of closed shells defines a universality class different from that of two- and three-dimensional bulk systems.
The state dependent quenching mechanism of metastable antiprotonic He atoms by contaminants is suggested to explain existing experimental data. The effect of antiproton transfer from the antiprotonic He to noble gas contaminants is shown to play a significant role. Preliminary estimations have been done in the framework of the coupled channels model. The obtained results support the idea of strong dependence of quenching cross-sections on the antiprotonic states quantum numbers and enable to explain qualitatively existing discrepancies between experimental results, obtained for different contaminant densities. New observable effects are predicted.
We investigate single photon double ionization (PDI) of helium at photon energies of 440 and 800 eV. We observe doubly charged ions with close to zero momentum corresponding to electrons emitted back-to-back with equal energy. These slow ions are the unique fingerprint of an elusive quasi-free PDI mechanism predicted by Amusia et al. nearly four decades years ago [J. Phys. B 8, 1248, (1975)] . It results from the non-dipole part of the electromagnetic interaction. Our experimental data are in excellent agreement with calculations performed using the convergent close coupling and time dependent close coupling methods.