Resumen de Interaction of proton beams with partially ionized plasmas
The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand the interaction of proton beams with high temperature and density targets, i.e. partially ionized plasmas. Proton beams are used to create and to analyze inertial confinement fusion plasmas. For both cases, electronic stopping is the main process that causes energy deposition on the target, and also it could be used to measure temperature and plasma density. This stopping is divided into two contributions: free electrons and bound electrons. The stopping of free electrons is analyzed using a dielectric function known as the Random Phase Approximation which calculates the effect of the incident charged particle as a perturbation that loses energy on target proportionally to the square of its charge. In order to calculate the stopping of bound electrons, we used mean excitation energy, I, that quantifies the energy exchanged in the process of excitation and/or ionization of the electron shells. I could be estimated using different methods, such as oscillator strength and Hartree-Fock. Using both methods, we will estimate the stopping due to free and bound electrons for partially ionized plasmas. We use these calculations in order to compare with experimental results, and a well agreement between our theoretical estimations and experimental data has been obtained. As fruit of this work, five articles have been written and sent to international journals. These have been included in this dissertation and all of them have the common style of this thesis, instead of its corresponding journal style because we want avoid copyright reclamations. An important aim of this thesis is to be freely distributed around all scientific community without any restriction, in order to share these results.
