The role of the wave packet coherence on the ionization cross section of He by p+ and C6+ projectiles

Abstract

We study the role of the projectile coherence in collision processes. We analyze in particular the ionization of He by p+ and C6+ projectiles at 1 and 100 MeV/amu, respectively. We compare the influence of this effect in both cases by performing a First Born calculation convoluted with a gaussian distribution, which accounts for the initial incoherence of the projectile wave packet. Even though this is the simplest approach that one could implement to solve this problem, it gives good agreement with the experimental results.