Experimental techniques for deflection and radiation studies with bent crystals

What happens when a high energy charged particle crosses an amorphous material? It loses energy by ionization and its trajectory is affected by the multiple Coulomb scattering, being these phenomena originated by uncorrelated collisions with the atoms. If the atoms of the target were distributed according to an ordered scheme, the uncorrelated collisions would turn into a coherent interaction with the whole atomic structure. This is the case of an aligned crystal that, depending on the orientation, is seen as a set of atomic planes or strings by the impinging particles. Planes and strings produce potential wells able to confine the charged particles in a transversal region of the crystal, in the so called channeling condition, so that, bending the crystal, particles are forced to follow the curvature, being deflected. This simple and powerful idea, dating 1979, is at the basis of many theoretical and experimental studies that have proven bent crystals effectiveness, described their possible applications and optimized the deflection performances. This thesis is a bridge across two complementary fields, that is the experimental techniques applied in the crystal study and the description of the observed phenomena from the phenomenological point of view as well as from the microscopic theoretical one, resulting in a complete overview on the bent crystal physics.