Transient thermal process induced by swift heavy ions: defect annealing and defect creation in Fe and Ni

Abstract

In the present paper, a method is proposed to quantitatively estimate the nuclear defect annealing by the electronic stopping power Se. The spatial distribution of defects created in metals by nuclear collisions is known from numerical calculation based on the binary collisions with screened Coulomb potential. In the framework of the thermal spike model, Se induced annealing of nuclear defects is simulated without considering athermal recombination. These calculations are applied to iron and nickel. The agreement between experiment and simulation in iron allows to determine the electron-phonon coupling value for iron. The defect creation by Se arises when the energy deposited on the atoms overcomes the energy necessary to melt the material.