Alignment of fast heavy ions using periodic crystal fields

We demonstrate the alignment of H-like and He-like heavy ions by three-dimensional resonant coherent excitation in a thin crystalline target. The projectile ions experienced a linearly polarized oscillating field in a crystal and were excited to a specific magnetic substate, forming the aligned 2P state. We prepared the different directions of the aligned states and observed the anisotropy of deexcitation x-ray emission, which was in good agreement with theoretical estimates.