Some current projects are described below and give a flavour of the work in progress. However, there are always new and important experiments in various stages of planning, design and commissioning. Collisions between singly and multiply charged ions and atomic hydrogen are currently being studied in several experiments. Apart from the fundamental interest, a detailed understanding of these processes is essential for the design and operation of controlled thermonuclear fusion devices based on heating and magnetic confinement of high temperature plasmas. Of special interest are reactions involving typical plasma impurity species together with metallic species relevant to possible fusion reactor wall materials.
Measurements involve collaboration with the international fusion community.
Crossed beam coincidence studies of inelastic collision processes Charge changing and ionising collisions in atomic hydrogen are being studied by passing beams of atomic and molecular ions through thermal energy beams of atomic hydrogen in a crossed-beam arrangement. These measurements, the first of their type, for H atom targets are being extended to multielectron targets where the relative importance of electron capture, transfer ionization and pure ionization can be determined for processes in which the charge states of both collision products are uniquely specified. The important role of Auger processes in multiple ionization of heavy atom targets has already been demonstrated. In the same apparatus, studies of electron capture to the continuum are being addressed through measurements of the energy distribution of electrons emitted at 0 with respect to the projectile beam. It is planned to extend these measurements to atomic hydrogen targets.