In this work, proton and deuteron stopping due to free and bound electrons in partially ionized plasma targets is evaluated. The stopping of target free electrons is calculated using the dielectric formalism, well described in our previous works. In the case of target bound electrons, a short expression to calculate their contribution to the stopping is used, where mean excitation energies are obtained by means of the Hartree-Fock method. Experiments with different kinds of plasmas are analyzed. For LiH plasma, estimated plasma stopping fits experimental data very well, within the error bars, recognizing the well-known enhanced plasma stopping. In the case of CH_{2} plasma, we obtain, from estimated ionization, that total stopping power increases when target electron density does. Our estimations are very similar to experimental data which show the same behavior with target free and bound electron density. Finally, in Al plasma, we compare directly our calculations with experimental data finding a very close agreement, where both stoppings have the same dependence on target ionicity. All these comparisons verify our theoretical model which estimates the proton or deuteron energy loss in partially ionized plasmas.

We have calculated the recombination yield for swift H 2 ϩ molecular ions at the exit of thin amorphous carbon foils, as a function of the dwell time and incident energy. Our results are based on a detailed simulation of the motion through the target of the H 2 ϩ molecular ion ͑before dissociation takes place͒ and its constituent fragments ͑after dissociation͒, including the following effects: Coulomb repulsion, nuclear scattering, electron capture and loss, as well as self-retarding and wake forces, which provide the relative distance and velocity of the dissociated fragments at the foil exit. The recombination of an H 2 ϩ ion at the exit of the foil depends on the interproton separation and internal energy of the dissociated fragments, and on their probability to capture an electron. Comparison of our results with the available experimental data shows a good agreement.

In this work, we present a dielectric function including the three conservation laws (density, momentum and energy) when we take into account electron-electron collisions in a plasma at any degeneracy. This full conserving dielectric function (FCDF) reproduces the random phase approximation (RPA) and Mermin ones, which confirms this outcome. The FCDF is applied to the determination of the proton stopping power. Differences among diverse dielectric functions in the proton stopping calculation are minimal if the plasma electron collision frequency is not high enough. These discrepancies can rise up to 2% between RPA values and the FCDF ones, and to 8% between the Mermin ones and FCDF ones. The similarity between RPA and FCDF results is not surprising, as all conservation laws are also considered in RPA dielectric function. Even for plasmas with low collision frequencies, those discrepancies follow the same behavior as for plasmas with higher frequencies. Then, discrepancies do not depend on the plasma degeneracy but essentially do on the value of the plasma collision frequency.

Dielectric functions of an electron plasma are calculated for an electron gas in which number, momentum, and energy are conserved during electron-electron collisions. They are compared with others in the literature, revealing that, in general, that imposition of the conservation laws tends to make the full conserving dielectric response more similar to the random phase approximation dielectric response than without it. This is due to the fact that in the random phase approximation model all the conservation laws are also enforced. Our model is checked for other plasma degeneracies; concretely we consider partially degenerate plasmas and classical plasmas. The behaviour of the dielectric functions of these plasmas is similar to the degenerate one. Differences among dielectric functions are more significant than for the degenerate case, but it is mainly due to low relaxation time values. The most relevant issue for these plasmas is the fact that the consideration of energy conservation in the dielectric function is more important in these cases, because plasma temperature is significant.

If plasmas are considered fully ionized, the electronic stopping of a charged particle that traverses them will only be due to free electrons. This stopping can be obtained in a first view through the random phase approximation (RPA). But free electrons interact between them affecting the stopping. These interactions can be taken into account in the dielectric formalism by means of two different ways: the Mermin function or the local field corrections (LFCs). LFCs produce an enhancement in stopping before the maximum and recover the RPA values just after it. Mermin method also produces firstly a high increase at very low energies, then a small enhancement at low energies and finally decreases below RPA values before and after the maximum. Differences between the two methods are very important at very low energies and by 30% around the stopping maximum.