Simulation of transmission of slow highly charged ions through insulating tapered macro-capillaries

The field of charged-particle transmission through insulating nanocapillaries has expanded its scope within the last few years. Originally motivated by research on elementary ion–insulator interactions recent work has shifted the focus on the development of tools for ion-beam shaping and guiding. The design of tapered macrocapillaries has attracted growing interest and has found first applications in directing ions to targeted regions of biological cells for microsurgery. Due to the large dimensions of these capillaries, simulation of such systems faces considerable difficulties which we address in this paper. A first proof-of-principle simulation is presented.