Speaker
Dr
Behcet Alpat
(INFN Sezione di Perugia)
Description
The nuclear interaction mechanism of carbon ions with nuclei represent a key point in the understanding of delivered dose in cancer therapy application. The effect of fragmentation diminishes the number of primary ions delivered to the region under treatment and produce a tail of damaging ionisation beyond the Bragg peak. In addition the trajectories of fragments may be sufficiently perturbed compared to that of the incident ion that they deposit a non-negligible dose outside the volume of tissue being treated. Carbon ions are also a significant component of the Galactic Cosmic Radiation and therefore they contribute to the dose delivered to astronauts on long duration space missions. The external environment is fairly well known, but when the incident radiation interact with the spacecraft hull and internal materials, nuclear fragmentation modifies the external radiation field. By using an experimental setup based on thin and thick double sided microstrip silicon detectors has been possible to identify the fragmentation products due to the interaction of very high energy primary ions on different targets. The analysis of different charge distribution of different fragments is based on a Likelihood approach.
Here we report total and partial cross-sections measured at GSI, Darmstadt, For 500 MeV/n energy 12 C beam incident on water (in flasks), polyethylene, lucite, silicon carbide, graphite, aluminium, copper, iron, tin, tantalum and lead targets. The results are compared to the predictions of GEANT4 and FLUKA Monte Carlo simulation programs .
Primary author
Dr
Behcet Alpat
(INFN Sezione di Perugia)
