A self-consistent model is proposed to study nonlinear phenomena, such as secondary resonance and hysteresis in the vertical oscillations of a charged microparticle in a radio-frequency sheath. The motion of a single microparticle in the sheath is simulated by solving Newton's equation in which various forces acting on the particle are taken into account. The particle charging and the sheath electric field are described by a self-consistent model of the collisional radio-frequency sheath dynamics. It is found that the nonlinearity is related to the particle's charge, the sheath electric field, and the external excitation force, as well as the ion drag force and neutral-gas friction on the particle.

The molecular dynamics method is used to simulate Coulomb explosion of fast C60 ion clusters in an Al target, taking into account dynamical screening of interionic interactions by the electron gas of the target. It is found that the wake forces in the medium are strong enough, depending on cluster speed, to stabilize the whole cluster against Coulomb explosion, or to compress the trailing part of the cluster, for prolonged times of penetration through the target. This is encouraging news for such cluster-ion beams applications where massive energy depositions in small volumes of targets are desired.

The interactions of charged particles with carbon nanotubes are studied by means of the linearized hydrodynamic theory for electronic excitations on the nanotube surface. General expressions are derived for the induced potential, the self-energy, and the stopping power for a charged particle moving paraxially in a nanotube. Numerical results are obtained showing the influence of the damping factor, the nanotube radius, and the particle position on its self-energy and the stopping power. Results for stopping power in the linearized hydrodynamic model are compared with those obtained by means of the dielectric formalism in random-phase approximation, showing a close agreement between the two approaches for high speeds of charged particles.

The interactions of charged particles with cylindrical tubules are studied within the framework of the dielectric theory. Elementary excitations on a tubule are modeled by an infinitesimally thin layer of freeelectron gas, uniformly distributed over the surface of the tubule. The dielectric function of such a system, obtained from the random-phase approximation, exhibits a dimensional crossover from two-dimensional to one-dimensional electron gas, when the radius of the tubule decreases. Energy loss of a charged particle, moving paraxially in a tubule, can be divided into a single-particle excitation part and a resonant excitation part. It is shown that the resonant excitation modes on a tubule, which dominate the energy loss in the high-velocity regime, are quite different from those in a cylindrical cavity in a solid, described by a bulk dielectric function of the surrounding three-dimensional electron gas.

The angle-resolved energy spectra of the electrons emitted from a metal surface during specular reflection of heavy ions have been studied by means of the first-order, time-dependent perturbation theory, with the electron states obtained from a finite step-barrier potential model. The surface response has been described by the dielectric formalism within the specular reflection model, where the local-field correction and the plasmon-pole approximation have been used for the dielectric function in the cases of low and high ion velocities, respectively. The ion trajectory has been evaluated based on the surface continuum potential and the ion image potential, whereas the screening of the ion by the bound electrons has been taken into account by means of the Brandt-Kitagawa model. It has been found that the electron spectra are dominated by the decay of surface plasmons for fast incident ions, whereas the electron emission is dominated by the single-electron excitation mechanism for slow incident ions.