Vicinage effect on the charge state of fast clusters in solids - art. no. 062901

We present a theoretical model for the recent experimental finding by Brune lle et al. [Phys. Rev. A 59, 4456 (1999)] of a reduction of average charge per ion in fast C-n clusters traversing thin carbon foils. This vicinage ef fect, due to the interaction of the electrons bound at each constituent ion with the neighboring ions, is described by the linear-response formalism, coupled with a statistical description of the cluster structure and the Bra ndt-Kitagawa variational theory for the bound electrons. The results obtain ed agree well with the experimental data.