Fraunhofer-type diffraction patterns of matter-wave scattering of projectiles: Electron transfer in energetic ion-atom collisions

We present results for single and double electron captures in intermediate energies H+ and He2+ projectiles colliding with a helium target. The processes under investigations are treated using a nonperturbative semiclassical approach in combination with Eikonal approximation to calculate the scattering differential cross sections. The latter reveals pronounced minima and maxima in the scattering angles, in excellent agreement with the recent experimental data. It turns out that the present structure depends strongly on the projectile energy and shows only slight variations with different capture channels. The observed structure demonstrates the analogy of atomic de Broglie's matter-wave scattering with lambda(dB) = 1.3-3.2 x 10(-3) a.u. and Fraunhofer-type diffraction of light waves.