Ion-ion charge exchange cross-sections for heavy ion fusion

In heavy ion fusion the compression of the DT-pellet requires adequate accelerators and storage rings for the driving projectile ions. The design of such storage rings crucially depends on the expected particle losses due to charge-changing collisions between the stored ions. Although the kinetic energy of driver ions in a heavy ion fusion scenario is in the order of several GeV, the relative kinetic energy of intrabeam ion-ion collisions is only in the keV region and therefore attainable in an ion-ion crossed-beams experiment. In this paper we report on the investigation of charge exchange in collisions between quadruply charged xenon and bismuth ions. With the knowledge of these cross-sections we were able to estimate the particle losses from a 100 Tm synchrotron which is one of the possible options for a future GSI upgrade. The relevance of such a synchrotron for plasma physics and HIF is given by the possible intensity of 10 ¹³ ions and approximately 40 kJ bunch energy.