Experimental evidence of threshold effects in the energy loss of protons in carbon and aluminum due to inner shell ionization.

We explore the contributions of inner shell ionization to the energy loss of 7 to 270 keV protons in C and Al foils under experimental conditions such that the product of the observation angle and the projectile energy is kept constant. By normalizing these energy loss measurements to the energy loss in the forward direction we observe a pronounced rising behavior with increasing energy. This effect appears in the same range of energies where the respective K- and L-shell ionization cross sections of these elements show a similar threshold behavior. Based also on various theoretical considerations we interpret these results as clear evidence of the inner shell ionization contribution to the energy loss.