NSRL User Guide

The heavy ions fragment and scatter in the stripping foil, vacuum window, ionization chambers and in the air along the beamline. This means a beam that is intended to be Fe-56 can have components from Z=1 to Z=26 and everything in between. Although this is not much of a concern for most users who are primarily concerned about total dose and dose rate, any user interested in effects of tracks will be very concerned. The goal of this study is to characterize the particles in the beam, as a function of Z, so that users will know what tracks are contributing to the total dose, and how the dose is delivered. We measured the fragmentation by placing a combination of scintillators and Cherenkov counters directly in the beam and also off the primary beam axis. Beam particles are identified by comparing the energy loss (dE/dX) in thin and thick scintillators with the light output of a Cherenkov radiator that the particles traverse.

Complete Beam Characterization Study