Heavy-ion cooling and radiative recombination

There is presently a large number of ion storage rings under construction which will use electron cooling for increasing the phase-space density of the stored ions in order to gain luminosity and resolution advantages for a variety of experiments. In this review a more general introduction to the electron-cooling technique is given. The atomic-physics aspects of electron-ion interactions at low relative velocity are identified. One of the most important processes is electron-ion radiative recombination because it can have strong implications on the operation of a storage ring employing electron cooling. Estimates are given of the ion-beam lifetime, as limited by recombination losses, as a function of electron density and temperature and for all values of the atomic number Z of the ions. The use of recombination processes in the electron cooler for atomic spectroscopy of few-electron heavy ions is discussed along with their implication on diagnostics of electron cooling. (orig.)