Unusually large inelastic energy losses have been measured for single collisions of argon ions with argon atoms and of iodine ions with xenon atoms using ion energies from 0.5 to 6 MeV and scattering angles from 4 to 20 deg. These losses, as high as 28 keV, are attributed in part to the production of inner-shell vacancies. The measurement of the energies of x rays from these collisions support this hypothesis.When heavy ions collide at energies greater than a few keV, their outer shells of electrons interpenetrate. During such a process, electrons in these shells may become excited, thus transferring some of the collision's kinetic energy to potential energy. A measurement of this inelastic energy loss Q is thus a measurement of the excitation energy transferred to the two atoms by the collision. Nearly all experiments concerning the collisions of heavy ions with heavy atoms investigate only the excitation of the one or two outermost electron shells, and these collisions usually result in inelastic losses of less than 2 keV. The purpose of the present experiment was to study the effects which arise when the innermost electron shells of heavy ions interpenetrate. Projectiles having energies up to 6 MeV were used and the study was limited to those collisions in which the incident ions were deflected through large (4-20 deg) angles. It was found, for example, that 1.5-MeV Ar + -Ar collisions, which force the argon K shells to interpenetrate, produce a sudden increase in Q. This increase can be attributed to the collisional production of a /C-shell vacancy. For the I w+ -Xe collisions, some Q values of nearly 30 keV were observed, and again, much of this loss must be due to the production of L-and M-shell vacancies during the collision.A 3-MV tandem Van de Graaff accelerator provided Ar + ions with energies from 0.5 to 1.5 MeV, I 2 + ions at 3 MeV, and I*+ ions at 6 MeV. The coincidence method 1 was used to determine , the average inelastic energy loss, for single large-angle collisions of these ions with target atoms. These data were taken using several combinations of incident ion energies and projectile scattering angles. Noncoincident measurements of the energies of the x-rays from these same collision combinations were made using a proportional counter sensitive to x-rays having energies from 1 to 15 keV.The distance of closest approach 2 between the two nuclei is a convenient parameter against which to plot Q, and Fig. 1(a) shows such a plot for the Ar + -Ar collisions. Contours are shown for several incident ion energies, with the larger distances of closest approach for each contour corresponding to the less violent, small-angle collisions. Figure 1(a) shows the lower energy data of Kessel and Everhart. 1 In the latter work, the data for 25-keV collisions display a discontinuity at about 0.24 A where Q is multiple valued. This distance of closest approach corresponds to an overlapping of the L shells of the two atoms, and Fano and Lichten 3 were the first to attribute this discontinuity to the formation of...