Departmental Colloquium
- Title
- Unlocking the Potential of Multiply-Charged Ions
- Guest Speaker
- Prof. Chad E. Sosolik
- Guest Affiliation
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University
- Host
- Prof. Phillip Stancil
- When
- Thursday, October 6, 2016 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Location
- Physics Auditorium (202)
- Details
- In this talk I will discuss multi- to highly charged ions, and the broad range of physical problems, both fundamental and applied, where they appear. This will include an introduction to the Clemson University Electron Beam Ion Trap (EBIT) laboratory, where you can gain local access (less than 120 km from Athens-to-Clemson) to multiply charged ions, an otherwise unique form of matter common to the universe at large but extremely rare on Earth. As a historical tool, EBITs were designed for ground-based spectroscopy, as they provide one of the few ways of controllably testing astrophysical models in a tunable environment while probing atomic structure along the way. This interest in terrestrial astrophysics has led to the development hybrid EBITs as ion sources where extracted “beams” of ions are used to study gas, dust and ice interactions and provide data for modelling charge exchange and hollow atom decay processes. While EBITs owe their design to this astrophysical connection-to-reality, they have also opened the door for curiosity driven materials studies that have revealed unique "hillock" structures formed by ion impacts and they have led to new technology areas in modified materials, surface cleaning, self-guiding capillaries, and single ion implantation.