DAMAGE IN METALS FROM MEV HEAVY-IONS

Despite the long-held belief that MeV-ion initiated damage in metals a rises only from nuclear recoils, recently it has been convincingly est ablished that at high levels of ion energy loss to electronic excitati on (similar to 1 keV/Angstrom) the response of some metals is signific antly influenced. In this paper I present a simple model of how this o ccurs that is in good agreement with the extensive experimental data a vailable for damage produced by GeV heavy ions in Fe. The parameters o f the model behave in a reasonable fashion for other metals where thes e effects are observed (Ti, Zr, Co, Nb, and Pt), which suggests that m ore detailed measurements on these materials could provide a useful ch eck on the model's generality.