A classical trajectory model has been used to predict total cross sections of single and double ionizing processes (including capture processes) for several ion-biological molecule collisional systems in the intermediate and high energy range. In this work, the systems studied are water, adenine or cytosine targets ionized by protons and alpha-particles with kinetic energies ranging from 25 keV amu(-1) to 3000 keV amu(-1). In our approach, we have combined several features of two classical methods namely the classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) and the classical over-barrier (COB) models. For the water target, our results are compared, for high kinetic energies of incident particles, to the available experimental and theoretical results, and reasonable agreement are generally observed especially for the single ionization (liberated electron moves freely after the collision) and the single capture (liberated electron captured by the projectile), both processes representing ionizing processes. Considering the double ionizing processes which have been largely less studied, the unique comparison concerns the double capture process for alpha+H(2)O collision for which we reproduce the experiment reasonably well. Finally, we present total cross sections of single and double ionizing processes for biological targets such as adenine and cytosine where no experimental results exist till now.

We have determined absolute charge transfer and fragmentation cross sections in He2++C60 collisions in the impact-energy range 0.1-250 keV by using a combined experimental and theoretical approach. We have found that the cross sections for the formation of He+ and He0 are comparable in magnitude, which cannot be explained by the sole contribution of pure single and double electron capture but also by contribution of transfer-ionization processes that are important even at low impact energies. The results show that multifragmentation is important only at impact energies larger than 40 keV; at lower energies, sequential C2 evaporation is the dominant process.

We have evaluated charge transfer, excitation and fragmentation cross sections in Na9+ + Cs collisions using a molecular close-coupling formalism and a postcollisional rate-equation model. The calculated charge transfer cross sections are in good agreement with recent experimental measurements below v = 0.04 au. We show that the relative abundance of the different fragments depend critically on the cluster temperature and the spectrometer time-of-flight window.

We have evaluated charge transfer cross sections for Na + 9 + Cs collisions using a molecular close-coupling formalism in the framework of the independent electron model. Our results are in good agreement with recent experimental measurements below v = 0.04 au and confirm existing discrepancies with previous experimental data. At low velocity, the calculated cross section exhibits the typical behaviour found in ion-atom collisions: a rapid increase with v followed by a plateau. More interestingly, our theory predicts that the cross section increases again at higher velocities, which calls for experimental confirmation.

We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of charge transfer and dissociation in collisions of slow Li31(2+) clusters with Cs atoms. We provide a direct quantitative comparison between theory and experiment and show that good agreement is found only when the exact experimental time of flight and initial cluster temperature are taken into account in the theoretical modeling. We demonstrate the validity of the simple physical image that consists in explaining evaporation as resulting from a collisional energy deposit due to cluster electronic excitation during charge transfer.