ABSTRACT
Atomic collisions are also important to technological applications in the field of thermonuclear fusion, where electron capture could partially neutralize the plasmas and seriously aggravate their stability. Furthermore, the results obtained in atomic physics are of considerable current interest in applications in biology and medicine, where ionization processes are essential for evaluation of the heavy particle mobility and the energy loss during their passage through matter. In the more general context of the utility of atomic collisions, common experience shows that the processes of excitation, capture and ionization find rich areas of applications across a number of interdisciplinary fields. At intermediate and high energies, K- and L-shell excitation and ionization of a few-electron ionic projectile by neutral atomic or molecular targets could potentially trigger radiation damage in biological media. Given the basic deficiencies of the impulse approximation (IA) for atomic gas targets, it would be highly desirable to re-investigate this issue by using the reformulated IA.
