A mini scanning device for profiling charged beams.

In this article, we present the development of a mini scanner device to characterize the full transverse spatial density of a charged particle beam using computed tomography. The profiler consists of a wire mounted on a linear translator that can rotate around the beam. Tests were performed on a millimeter electron beam with 200 eV energy and 100 nA intensity, which allowed us to control and monitor both beam focusing and deflection.

Electron-induced ionization and cationic fragmentations of the isolated molecule of 2,4-imidazolidinedione (hydantoin): a study of the relaxing path thresholds.

In this work, our new experimental setup has been used to study the ionization and fragmentation of a prebiotic molecule, hydantoin, by electron impact. Scanning of the incident electron energy allows the determination of the appearance thresholds of the cations. The vertical ionization potential was found to be in good agreement with previous data. Dissociation thresholds for the main fragmentation patterns were also measured. In parallel, thanks to quantum chemical calculations, reaction schemes compatible with the experimental results are given.

Comparison between gold nanoparticle and gold plane electron emissions: a way to identify secondary electron emission.

To understand the nanoparticle radiosensitising effect observed in the radiotherapy context, it is necessary to study the nanoparticle electron emission under x-ray irradiation, which is one of the causes of the radiosensitisation. In this paper, we compare the electron energy spectrum of gold samples irradiated by 1253.6 eV x-ray photons for energies down to 2 eV for nanoparticles and for a plane surface. This comparison highlights important differences due to nanoparticle properties especially at low energy, allowing the identification of strong nanoparticle secondary electron emission. This strong nanoparticle emission could play a very important role in radiosensitisation mechanisms.

Ultrafast nonadiabatic fragmentation dynamics of doubly charged uracil in a gas phase.

A combination of time-dependent density functional theory and Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics methods is used to investigate fragmentation of doubly charged gas-phase uracil in collisions with 100 keV protons. The results are in good agreement with ion-ion coincidence measurements. Orbitals of similar energy and/or localized in similar bonds lead to very different fragmentation patterns, thus showing the importance of intramolecular chemical environment. In general, the observed fragments do not correspond to the energetically most favorable dissociation path, which is due to dynamical effects occurring in the first few femtoseconds after electron removal.

Absolute measurements and theoretical calculations of photoionization cross sections along the isonuclear sequence of multiply charged barium ions.

Photoionization of multiply charged ions of the Ba isonuclear sequence up to Ba6+ has been studied in a beam-beam experiment. A very strong increase in the resonance structures was observed when moving from Ba2+ to Ba6+. Absolute values of the photoionization cross sections were measured for Ba2+ and Ba3+ ions. The interpretation of the results is provided using theoretical multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock and relativistic random phase approximation calculations, showing that the collapse of the nf orbitals occurs for Ba4+.