Theory of the stopping of fast heavy highly charged structured ions in their collisions with complex atoms

We have developed a nonperturbative theory of the energy losses by fast heavy structured ions in their collisions with neutral complex atoms by taking into account all of the possible, including multiple, excitations and ionizations of both projectile and target. We have been able to achieve a significant simplification of the problem by considering multielectron targets and by restricting our analysis to highly charged structured ions with charges much larger than unity, when the characteristic size of the electron coat of the projectile ion is much smaller than that of the neutral target atom. The errors in the approximations used and in the calculations of inelastic cross sections are estimated. We have derived formulas for the effective stopping similar to the well-known Bethe-Bloch formulas. To illustrate the contribution from multielectron excitations of the ion coat to the effective stopping, we make a comparison with the calculations based on the perturbation theory. The energy losses of Uq+ (10 <= q <= 70) ions in their collisions with argon atoms and the energy losses of Pb and Bi ions on several targets have been calculated. A comparison with experiment is made.