Collective effects in the energy loss of ion beams in fusion plasmas

E.M. BRINGA; N.R. ARISTA

PHYSICAL REVIEW E

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Año: 1995 vol. 52 p. 3010 - 3014

1539-3755

A model to describe the collective effects in the energy loss of intense ion beams or large ion clusters in plasmas is formulated. Important interference effects are obtained, which are produced by the dynamical vicinage interactions between the beam particles. They are represented in an average statistical way using a pair-correlation function to describe a bunch of particles in the beam, and using the dielectric function approach to represent collective and individual excitations in the plasma. The magnitude and the characteristics of the collective effect in the energy loss are illustrated for several cases of beam-plasma interactions in the range of current experiments using high-intensity ion beams. A strong enhancement in the energy loss values is obtained for intermediate beam or cluster sizes.