The paracentric HDA: III. The real spectrograph 6.1 Spectrograph operation mode 76 6.2 HDA -Lens voltages parameterization 77 6.2.1 V 0 study 77 6.2.2 Lens focusing study 6.3 Spectrograph operation in low resolution mode 6.4 Spectrograph operation in high resolution mode 6.5 Performance comparison of the hemispherical spectrograph and the KSU tandem spectrometer 6.6 Discussion and Conclusions 7 Data Analysis: Determination of absolute DDCS 7.1 Energy Calibration 93 7.2 Double Differential Cross-Section 7.3 Absolute MCP efficiency determination: Binary Encounter electron normalization 7.4 Error analysis 8 Binary Encounter electrons 8.1 Background and motivation Ill 8.2 Impulse Approximation 8.2.1 Rutherford Scattering Model 8.2.2 Elastic electron Scattering Model 8.3 BEe peak enhancement factors for collisions of 0.4-1.2 MeV/u B( 2-5 ) + + H 2 8.3.1 Historical background 8.3.2 Results and discussion 8.4 Conclusions 9 Spectroscopy of B^1 -3)+ intermediate states 126 9.1 Motivation 126 9.2 The Auger spectrum of B 4+ + H 2 : Production of He-like B 3+ doubly excited states 126 9.3 The Auger spectrum of B 3+ + H 2 : I. Production of Li-like B 2+ and He-like B 3+ doubly excited states . . . 132 9.4 The Auger spectrum of B 3+ + H 2 : II. Production of Li-like B 2+ triply excited states 138 9.5 The Auger spectrum of B 3+ + H 2 : III. Determination of B 3+ beam metastable fraction 142 9.6 The Auger spectrum of B 2+ + H 2 147 9.7 Conclusions 156 11 7 Angular compression of electrons emitted from fast projectiles 17 8 Geometrical interpretation of the broadening effect 19 9 Broadening coefficients ABg ' jt and AB^/e as a function of the labo ratory angle θ 21 10 Top view of the J. R. Macdonald Laboratory. 24 11 The zero-degree experimental setup 26 12 Chamber pressure as a function of the gas-cell pressure 28 13 The hemispherical paracentric spectrograph for ZAPS 29 14 The 4-element electrostatic focusing and decelerating lens 30 Chevron arrangement microchannel plates 31 16 PSD spatial resolution study 33 17 The Electronics Diagram 34 XSYS Data Acquisition System output 35 Dead Time Correction as a function of the count rate 37 Schematic diagram of the hemispherical deflector analyser geometry. . . 41 Detection plane of hemispherical analyser 47 3-D orbit in HDA 48 Reduced voltages V x /W and V 2 /W applied on the HDA 50 3-D graph of the dispersion D 53 Lens geometry and focusing parameters 55 3-D graph of the overall base-resolution 9?i > 56 Mean overall base resolution ^ 57 Theoretical energy calibration curves 59 Constants A,B and C of the energy calibration relation 60 Derivative of the energy calibration relation 61 The energy acceptance window Ar W i n dow 63 SIMION simulation for central and paracentric entries 66 SIMION simulation for six different analyser entries Ro 67 SIMION study of base energy resolution 69 SIMION study of trace widths over the PSD area 70 36 SIMION study of energy resolution over the PSD area 71 SIMION study of reduced acceptance energy window 72 38 SIMION simulations, theoretical calculation...