PROBLEMS IN THE PHYSICS OF ION-ATOM COLLISIONS IMPORTANT FOR ACCELERATOR TECHNOLOGY AND ALTERNATIVE NUCLEAR-POWER

Some problems of accelerator technology and the practical use of high- intensity proton and ion beams for fundamental and applied research an d nuclear power production based on the use of accelerated particle be ams and subcritical reactors are briefly described. All these problems require detailed study of ion-atom collision physics. The main proble ms in developing theoretical methods for calculating the differential and total effective cross sections for processes occurring in fast ion -atom collisions, where the two colliding particles are multielectron systems, are discussed. Methods are given for the approximate calculat ion of the angular and energy distributions of ions and electrons in t he ionization of multielectron ions and atoms with accuracy sufficient for practical applications. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.