Collision processes of multiply charged ions with atoms

This review attempts to present an overview of the basic concepts and the theoretical and experimental progress made in the past several years in the investigations of the collision processes of multiply charged ions with neutral atomics particles. This research field has become recently one of the central topics in the whole atomic collision physics due to the recognized decisive role of these processes in many high-temperature laboratory and astrophysical plasmas, and, in particular, due to the urgent collisions data needs in the controlled thermonuclear fusion programmes. A large amount of space in the review is devoted to the charge exchange processes whose cross sections are extremely large (approx. > 10-14 cm2) and therefore bring important practical implications. The excitation, ionization and various Auger-type processes, occurring in atom-multiply charged ion collisions, are also discussed in detail. Since this research field is still in a stage of rapid development, some of the exposed results (specially those concerning the problems in which multi-electron transitions are involved) have to be considered as tentative and preliminary. (orig.)