[en] The beam-foil source can produce spectra of almost every ion and allows easy measurement of atomic lifetimes of excited levels. Beam-foil spectra have some unique characteristics that made them valuable tool for the term analysis of highly charged ions. As an example, we will describe the work undertaken at Liège on Ne IV and Ne V. Beam-foil is still the only general method for measuring the lifetime of atomic levels in highly charged ions. However, the accuracy of the classical beam-foil method is limited by the non-selective broadband excitation in the foil that populates almost all excitation levels up to very high energy and corrupts by cascading phenomena the normal single-exponential decay curves. We will describe some
techniques that have been invented to obviate this infamous “cascading effect”, especially the beam-foil-laser spectroscopy method recently developed in our laboratory. We will present an overview of the beam-foil spectroscopy research performed at the University of Liège together with other recent trends in the field of fast-beam spectroscopy.