Department of Physics and Astronomy: Publications and Other Research
Date of this Version
September 1989
Abstract
When energetic heavy ions pass into a medium, they create a trail of excitations, ionizations, and secondary electrons whose effect is represented through their average radial “dose” distribution. The structure of the track depends on this and on the observed “end point.” Tracks may be observed microscopically or through the gross effect of a particle beam. We take the medium to be an assemblage of “targets” whose response to gamma rays is approximated by the cumulative Poisson distribution. While most detectors are 1-hit systems, we have discovered 2-hit and up to 8-hit response. Folding the gamma-ray response into the radial dose distribution we obtain the probability for activating the target as a function of radial distance which is integrated to yield the action cross section, through which the effect of a beam may be calculated.
Comments
Published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 40/41 (1989), pp. 1271-1274. Copyright © Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. Used by permission. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0168583X