Eur. Phys. J. D (2017) 71: 63
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-70613-7

Regular Article

Theoretical analysis of the projectile and target coherence in COLTRIMS experiments on atomic ionization by fast ions^*

Department of Nuclear Physics and Quantum Theory of Collisions, Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia

^a e-mail: kouzakov@srd.sinp.msu.ru

Received: 30 September 2016
Received in final form: 6 November 2016
Published online: 16 March 2017

Abstract

Possible effects of the so-called projectile and target coherence in the ion-atom ionizing collisions studied with COLTRIMS are examined by means of quantum scattering theory of wave packets. The projectile-coherence effects are shown to have no serious influence on the measured fully differential cross sections. It is demonstrated that in the discussed experiments the effects of the target center-of-mass wave packet might be of greater importance.