Planar channeling and quasichanneling oscillations in a bent crystal

Abstract

Particles passing through a crystal under planar channeling are captured by a continuous potential and experience transverse oscillations in their motion. As channeled particles approach the atomic planes, they are likely to be dechanneled. This effect is being used in ion-beam analysis with MeV energy. We study this effect in a bent crystal for positive and negative particles within a wide range of energies in sight of application of such crystals at accelerators. We look for the conditions for the observation or not of channeling oscillations in the deflection angle distribution in experiments where the beam passes through the bent crystal. Indeed a new kind of oscillations in the deflection angle distribution, strictly related to the motion of over-barrier particles, i.e. quasichanneled particles, is predicted. Such oscillations, named planar quasichanneling oscillations, possess a different nature than channeling oscillations. Through computer simulation, we study this effect and provided a theoretical interpretation for them. We show that channeling oscillations can be observed only for positive particles while quasichanneling oscillations can exist for particles with either sign. The conditions for experimental observation of channeling and quasichanneling oscillations at existing accelerators with available crystal are found and optimized.