Dielectric approaches for interactions of protons, positrons, and electrons in cold matter and plasmas

Abstract

This work investigates the projectile and temperature dependence of the energy loss of charged particles in matter. To this end, we analyze two dielectric approaches which consider the presence of bound and free electrons and the effects of the ionization process. With these approaches, we calculate the energy-loss moments of protons, positrons, and electrons traversing Si, Fe, and Al targets, both in the cold solid phase and in the plasma state. We compare the results from the unified-wave-packet model (UWPM) and the shellwise local plasma approximation (SLPA) on an extensive range of parameters, including low, intermediate, and high projectile energies and target temperatures going from cold solid-state densities to hot plasma with temperatures up to 1000 eV. We reformulate the SLPA to include light-particle restrictions. We give special consideration to the case of positrons and electrons, where the inner-shell effects have not been analyzed in our previous works. Comparisons with experimental results for cold solid targets are presented, and stopping enhancement effects for heated targets are described, showing the physical origin of these effects.