Image Charge Acceleration of Multi-Charged Argon Ions in Grazing Collisions with an Aluminum Surface

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Abstract
Arq+-ions (q = 0 to 6) with an energy of 25 keV are scattered under glancing angles of incidence from a clean and flat Al(111)-surface. Investigations of the angular distributions of the scattered projectiles reveal characteristic angular shifts in dependence on the charge state of the incident ion. We attribute this observation to an acceleration of the multi-charged ions due to their attractive image charge interaction in the vicinity of a conducting surface. Our data provide important information with respect to charge exchange phenomena during the scattering of multi-charged ions from metal surfaces.