Rainbow and glory effects in the autoionization of atoms excited by the impact of heavy ions

When the autoionizing state formed by the impact of a slow positively charged ion decays, the line profile of the emitted electron is affected by the post-collision interaction with the Coulomb field of the outgoing projectile, displaying a strong enhancement in the forward direction. On the other hand, when the autoionization process is induced by a negatively charged projectile, we demonstrate that the electron spectrum displays a depletion in the forward direction and a sharp enhancement at a certain intermediate angle. We show that these structures can be interpreted as forward glory and rainbow effects, respectively. We discuss the similarities and discrepancies between a continuum-distorted wave (CDW) approximation and a classical description of these phenomena. (Author)