Measurements of the electronic energy loss are presented for 4 He and 7 Li ions channeling along the Si main axial directions at intermediate to high projectile energies. The Barkas effect, an energy-loss enhancement proportional to the third power of the projectile charge at high energies, is clearly separated from other processes. It reaches about 50% for Li ions channeling along the Si ͗110͘ direction. The observed Barkas contribution from the valence-electron gas is in fair agreement with the Lindhard model. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.1482 The energy loss of ions slowing down in matter has been investigated for many years because of its relevance for ion beam analysis, materials modification, and nuclear physics. Moreover, there exist fundamental issues concerning the underlying physical processes of the energy loss at low and intermediate projectile energies. At high velocities, the main energy-loss mechanisms (ionization and excitation) are qualitatively well understood. But important points related to energy loss in the polarization field are still unclear. For the weakly interacting fast light ions, the polarization field is given by the dielectric function of the medium. It corresponds to an enhanced electron density around positive ions and to a reduction around negatively charged particles. This effect yields a Z 3 contribution to the stopping power at high velocities (Z is the projectile charge), and thus, it depends on the sign of the projectile charge.This so-called Barkas effect has first been observed by Barkas and collaborators [1] who found that the range of negative pions exceeds the one of positive pions with equal incident velocity. A direct determination of a relatively small Barkas effect has recently been performed using antiprotons and protons [2,3]. For heavier projectiles, other higher-order effects as well as shell corrections compete equally with the Barkas effect, and thus a clear and unequivocal separation of this effect from the others has not been achieved successfully yet [4]. Previously, channeling measurements of the Barkas effect [5,6] were performed under conditions where the so-called Bloch correction [7] is of comparable magnitude but of opposite sign as the Barkas contribution. The leading term of the Bloch correction is proportional to Z 4 , and it is closely related to the restriction of reaction probabilities to a maximum of 1 per target electron. To overcome these problems, it is therefore essential to determine the magnitude of the Barkas effect in an alternative way, where sources of errors are minimized.All theoretical models of the Barkas effect (reviewed by Basbas [8]) agree about the importance of the polarization of the medium in distant collisions, where ions act similar to photons. However, the importance of close collisions has been a subject of controversy in the literature [8]. Lindhard [9] stated that the close collisions may contribute nearly equally to the Barkas effect, because of the influence of the dynamical screening potential on electron-scatteri...